Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this year, we passed the 10th anniversary of when the first report on emissions trading was handed to the then Howard government. Since that time, we have had both major parties go to an election promising action on climate change and promising an emissions trading scheme as the lowest cost way to achieve that. For example, under the previous government we had the advice to John Howard that an emissions trading scheme was the way to go and that deferral and delay meant higher costs. That was the advice to the then Prime Minister before the last election. Both major parties went to the election promising the Australian people action on climate change. One party today is walking away from that commitment. Members of that party are walking away from commitments entered into with the government in good faith on both the content and the procedure of the legislation. I will close by simply reminding the chamber of this: we as senators were not sent here to delay and we as senators were not sent here by the Australian people to play procedural games. We were sent here to make decisions and we were sent here to vote, and we should.

A political party that is so irresponsible as to utilise the procedures in this chamber to delay whilst they go through their internal political process, seeking to overturn an agreement they do not like, is not worthy of government. If anybody has any doubt about what is really happening, they only need to look at what the Leader of the Opposition is saying about those in his ranks and what they are currently undertaking. The fact is: there is a group of senators and members in the extreme right of the Liberal Party who cannot countenance taking action on climate change. They have campaigned against it internally and externally. They have shown extraordinary disloyalty inside their own party. They have breached their own election commitments to the Australian people, they have walked away from the commitments entered into in good faith between the government and the opposition—on the content of the bill and on process. They have done it because they simply do not want to act on climate change, and they will never change.