Senate debates
Monday, 30 November 2009
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Customs) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Excise) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — General) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Excise Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Customs Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Amendment (Household Assistance) Bill 2009 [No. 2]
In Committee
8:32 pm
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source
I am being about as relevant as you were, Senator Abetz. I again make the point: Work Choices, a dramatic policy introduced by the Howard government, had eight hours less committee debate in total than where we are up to now. So, Senator Abetz, do not come in here and lecture me and other Labor senators about participating in this committee debate and answering questions, because we have gone well past the time that your government permitted for questions on an extreme industrial relations policy. That is the factual situation and that is the context.
In terms of the IPART report, I understand it is a draft. If and when that report is finalised and IPART believes it is appropriate for the federal government to consider it, obviously we will do so. But you are asking me on the basis of a media report to comment on a draft report that I have not seen.
The next point I would make is in relation to household assistance and the senator’s assertions about electricity prices and his inappropriate assertion that a Labor senator was dismissive of this issue. Labor are not. In fact, the largest single proportion of assistance under this scheme goes to Australian families. Ninety per cent of Australian families gained support from our scheme to help them manage the impact of a carbon price. We have consciously sought to do that. That has been a principle to which we have adhered.
As to the amount of compensation, Senator, I know you have not been in the chamber for some of this debate because you have presumably been off attending to other matters inside your party, but I have read out and put on the Hansard on a number of occasions the amount of assistance. I can keep doing it in response to a whole range of questions over and over again, but at some point I think the Australian public would have to ask if the continued re-asking of the same questions is a sensible use of the Senate’s time. As I said, we have now been in this chamber answering questions from the government side for some 23 hours—well beyond what you allowed in government as scrutiny of Work Choices.
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