Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It must be a cruel world over there in the Liberal Party for Senator Birmingham to have to make that sort of speech when only a couple of months ago he was an enthusiastic supporter of the government’s emissions trading scheme. In fact, he had been a supporter of emissions trading throughout his political career in this place. I am sure he was one of the proud supporters of the position that the previous government—John Howard’s government—took to the election. Let no-one forget that the Liberal Party went to the last election with a policy for an emissions trading scheme. That was a policy supported by those opposite right up until a number of months ago—a policy, a position, legislation that was negotiated to agreement with the Liberal Party. It was ready to be voted on after being negotiated with the Liberal Party, and Senator Birmingham was one of those senators who was enthusiastically going to support that legislation through the parliament.

Nonetheless, his preferred leader was rolled by a single vote, even though I think there were some votes missing or some votes filled out incorrectly. I think some people in the Liberal Party could not even find their way to actually vote for either of the two candidates—it is pretty hard task for some of them. But there we go, by one vote the leadership changed. Now Senator Birmingham finds himself on the front bench of the Liberal Party and has to do these cruel things. I guess that is a reflection of the cruelty of their leadership in this place, that they would make Senator Birmingham come in here and make a speech like that—a speech which he does not believe in, which about half of the Liberal Party do not believe in. What was really surprising was that I thought when the first speaker got up in this debate, after their lead questions in question time today, he would be promoting their scheme. As 4½ minutes went by I was wondering whether he would ever actually get to their policy at all. Then, with 30 seconds to spare, Senator Birmingham brought himself to acknowledge that today they announced a policy. But was there any detail of that policy? Did he try to sell it? No, because he knows it is a hollow policy, it is an absolute con job. It puts no cap on pollution. What it says is that you can continue to pollute as much as you like and we will get the taxpayer to pay by implementing regulation. There will be no market based solution but, simply, the taxpayer will pay for the costs of pollution on which we will put no tax.

I know Senator Birmingham is a little bit embarrassed about this whole thing, and I am not surprised that he is now leaving the chamber. I think we will be here at some point in time when the wiser heads in the Liberal Party have gone back to the policy that they know was the correct policy in the first place. They did know at one point in time that the cost of failing to act was to be far greater than the cost of acting. They also knew that the best way to control emissions was by putting a cost on pollution—making the polluters pay and then using that money to drive technological change and to subsidise the community for the extra costs that would be applied through making those substantial steps. That is what it was going to be: charge the polluters and subsidise the community. They have thrown that out. They knew at one point in time that that was the best way to achieve reductions in emissions—they knew that.

One of the other really disturbing and, I think, sad things about our legislation going down late last year was the behaviour of the Australian Greens. The Australian Greens, who say that they want to do something about climate change, stood shoulder to shoulder with the sceptics and the deniers on that side of the chamber and voted to do nothing about saving the environment. They voted to do nothing about reducing emissions in this country. They stood shoulder to shoulder in support of the deniers and the sceptics, and they ought to be condemned too. The Australian people ought not to be sucked in or fooled by the Australian Greens. When they say that they want to do something about the environment, that they stand for doing something for the environment, let no-one forget that in this place they had an opportunity to support this government in doing something about climate change but they voted to do nothing. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the deniers and the sceptics and voted to do nothing about climate change and our environment—and the Australian people ought not forget that. They will stand equally condemned as the Liberal Party.