Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take up that interjection about rabble. Let me tell you that I have never seen such a rabble as we have witnessed with the coalition over the last week. Here we are discussing serious issues about reducing the carbon footprint of this country, yet what do we have opposite? We have a coalition that are interested in ripping each other apart and putting an extremist at the head of their party, an extremist who is prepared to take rights away from workers but not to address the issue of carbon pollution reduction and deal with the real issues that are affecting working families in this country. What could be more important than dealing with the issue of reducing the carbon footprint in this country?

We do not believe that reducing the taxation effectiveness of these carbon sink forests will do the business. We do not believe that should happen. We believe that the tax deductions are an incentive to grow forests for the purpose of reducing carbon dioxide. It is about time that the coalition actually dealt with the real issues and actually tried to come up with a policy, instead of coming in here and talking for hour after endless hour on a filibuster until they change their leadership, until they get an extremist leadership in there that is prepared to walk away from the real issues that are affecting ordinary Australians, walk away from future generations and walk away from the needs of the children and grandchildren of this country. That is what they are doing: walking away from the real needs of this country in terms of reducing its carbon footprint.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has had more inquiries than you can poke a stick at. I have been on three of them and I have witnessed every senior and effective scientist come to those committees and indicate that we must do something to reduce our carbon footprint. What we must do is continue to give incentives throughout the community and throughout industry to make sure that we actually target the need to reduce carbon pollution in this country. What we are doing by opposing the removal of the tax deduction is giving farmers a reason to get in there and help reduce the carbon pollution in this country.

We hear all of the rhetoric from the coalition, but when I was overseas recently I spoke to a former prime minister of Kiribati and he indicated that they were desperately concerned about what was happening in the Pacific islands through global warming, which it seems to me the majority of coalition senators deny is happening. The coalition are the climate change deniers, the climate change sceptics and the climate change vandals in this country. They have got no credibility in terms of their position in relation to carbon pollution reduction. They have got no credibility as a real opposition in this country. They have been nothing but a rabble over the period of time since they determined that Malcolm Turnbull, the member for Wentworth, had to go. They determined he had to go because he was taking a progressive position, he was not a conservative, he was not going to do their bidding, and he was not going to buckle under.