Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to indicate to the Senate that the coalition will be voting against the Greens amendments. I also want to note that after days of berating us for delaying the debate, I see the Labor Party has now brought on the cheer squad. It is quite clear to me that we are now going to have more filibustering from the Labor Party. Labor Party senators have obviously had no interest whatsoever in this debate in the last four or five days, as many of my colleagues have been seriously debating and looking into this bill, exposing its flaws and constructively trying to find out why it is so absolutely essential that this parliament remain here after time to rush through this bill, just several days before the Copenhagen climate change conference will convene to indicate to the world what the world is doing. I think, and many, many Australians think, that it is essential for Australia to know what the rest of the world is doing before Australia commits itself to a course of action which may well be irreversible.

As I have said many a time, of course the climate is changing, but we still have Labor Party senators pointing the finger and saying that, because you vote against Mr Rudd’s legislation, you are a climate change denier, suggesting that to be a sceptic on anything is suddenly a criminal offence. Good heavens! We live in Australia, which encourages expressions of different views and different opinions, and yet people from the Prime Minister to the minister and down to backbenchers, if we do not happen to agree with them, are accusing us of being deniers. I for one do not deny that the climate is changing—I was going to say I remember, but I do not remember; I was not around—but there was a time when Australia was covered in ice. There was another time when the centre of Australia was a lush, tropical jungle, and there was a time when dinosaurs roamed around Australia because of the climate of the time. But things have changed. Whether man was around when the earth was covered in ice, I do not know. I certainly was not here then!

So the climate has clearly changed. Is it man’s problem? Has man contributed to it? Everyone on the other side, from their very scientific background, has the view that it is man. Good luck to them. I did not realise so many of them had such scientific knowledge. I am one of those who clearly confess that I do not have the scientific knowledge. So I, as we always do in this business, look around. We take advice, and we go to lectures and forums. We talk to people, we meet in groups, and we welcome people into our offices to give us their opinion. We ask scientists—who should know what they are on about. But, regrettably, the scientists that have come through my door are sort of evenly divided.