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

Well, here we are with the coalition’s A-team in terms of the climate change debate! There is Senator Joyce, Senator Abetz and, bringing up the rear, who do we have but the biggest climate change sceptic in the country, Senator Bernardi. We have Senator Abetz coming into this place and talking about those opposite being ‘a visionary coalition’—before Christmas, a rabble; after Christmas, visionary. Politics do not work like that. People know that you have changed your leader but you are still the same old rabble that you were, with absolutely no ideas and no capacity to deal with the real issues that are facing ordinary Australians in this country. And what do you give us? You give us a slogan. You have given us slogans before. What was the big slogan that Senator Joyce kept putting his hand up for? What was that big slogan? The big slogan was ‘work choices’. That was the big slogan from the coalition. From a coalition that were concerned about Australian working families, we got Work Choices.

And now we have got ‘direct action’. Direct action will never deliver. You know that direct action is a con job. You know that this policy is an absolute con job on the Australian public. The press are onto you, we are onto you, and the public are onto you. We know what it is about; it is about trying to pretend that you care about the environment and it is about trying to pretend that the extremists have not taken over the coalition. But the extremists have taken over the coalition—the industrial extremists and the climate change extremists.

The coalition have failed to meet the challenge of climate change, the greatest political, economic, social and environmental challenge that this country has. The challenge for the divided, extremist coalition is to change what you are doing and actually think about future generations in this country. You know that the science is in, the science is there: surging levels of greenhouse gas emissions, underlying warming trends, acceleration in the melting of the ice sheets, glaciers and ice caps. You know it is there but you deny and deny. Rapid arctic ice, sea decline—the current sea rise is underestimated. Delaying action risks irreversible damage, and the turning point may come soon. It is not me who is saying this; it is the scientific community around the world and in Australia.

The coalition policy is a Clayton’s policy. It is a con job. The coalition policy will not work. It will not require anything from the polluters. It slugs the taxpayers instead of the polluters. It is unfunded and it will mean higher taxes. Senator Joyce has a responsibility to say where the cuts to the services will be—where the cuts to schools will be, where the cuts to hospitals will be—under the unfunded, unacceptable and unthought-through program that you have put up to try and get you through to the next election. The coalition policy is really a product of despair in the coalition, onto their fourth leader. It is a product of division. The Nationals do not like the Liberals, the Liberals do not like the Nationals, and the Liberals do not like each other. That is the reality. If you try to produce a policy from that chaos, you get what you see: a policy that is a Clayton’s policy, a policy that will not deliver and a policy that relies on fear and scaremongering within Australia by the coalition—the experts on fear, the experts on scaremongering, at it again to try and cover up their lack of cohesion, their lack of unity and their lack of leadership on the key policy issues facing the Australian public.

Neither Senator Joyce nor the Leader of the Opposition is capable of explaining this so-called simple policy that you have. You cannot tell us what services will be cut, such as what hospitals will be closed, and where we might end up in relation to the funds—and you are not prepared to identify where they will come from. You have actually failed not only the Senate but also the nation by not adopting a policy that will deal with the carbon pollution issue that faces everyone around the world. It is quite clear that the arguments in terms of the costings are all about fear and loathing. The so-called Treasury spokesman, Senator Joyce, just speaks more and more mistruths in this place and peddles more and more mistruths in the public eye.

If you look at the Treasury modelling, you can see that there will be 1.7 million jobs created between now and 2020 under Labor’s scheme. There will be 4.7 million more jobs by 2050. There will be a growth in gross national product. The value of output will increase in the economy. Average incomes will increase by $4,300. That is the Treasury modelling for the Labor Party policy, which is a funded policy and a policy designed to do something about the growing CO2 emissions. Early action is required to reduce uncertainty in business, to ensure that we get the investment that we need and to ensure that we can engage in what is happening all over the world, where progressive governments are looking to see how we can deliver the jobs of the future and ensure that we can build a low-carbon economy for our kids into the future.

The position put forward by Senator Joyce in relation to funding is absolute nonsense. It will be the coalition policy that will cost households jobs and cost households money because it is unfunded. The Labor Party policy will have an impact of just over one per cent and that one per cent for 90 per cent of households will be refunded totally. A cost of just over $600—$624 a year—with a rebate of $660 to those households: that is what is being put forward by the Labor Party. Households will be protected.

Under your policy there is no protection for households, no protection for jobs, no protection for hospitals and no protection for infrastructure. It is an example of the economic incompetence of the new shadow finance minister. You just have to watch Senator Joyce in action. The longer it goes the better it is because we expose the hypocrisy and the unintelligible gobbledygook that underpins all of your arguments. You are an absolute disgrace. You have been put in there purely to try to cover over the problems and the division in the coalition, and it is not going to work because you are going to blow it apart. We can see it every day. It is absolutely fantastic. (Time expired)