Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I have an inconvenient truth for Labor and I have some words of hope for the Australian people. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, upon whose report Labor have based and justified their ETS or great green tax, as the Australian public has come to know it, is built as a house of cards. It is built on rent seeking, on dodgy science, on intimidation and alarmism—all characteristics which the Labor Party have used in trying to justify their emissions trading scheme. But the only conclusion a sensible minded person can come to when you have a policy that is built on such dodgy foundations is that the policy response itself is dodgy, that it is flawed—and the Australian public is waking up to the fact that Labor’s ETS is hopelessly and horribly flawed.

Here are some of the reasons why the IPCC report is flawed and dodgy, and Labor have repeated some of them today. Senator McLucas and Senator Cameron, the dinosaurs of the climate change movement, are looking back at stuff that has been discredited and using it to justify their increasingly discredited arguments. Firstly, Himalayan glaciers: they were meant to melt by 2035. False, and proven false. That was another dodgy thing we heard repeated today. We have not heard that 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is going to disappear. That is false too, but they probably did not have time to remark on it. The hockey stick graph was proved to be built on false and fraudulent data. The claim of wild weather and increasing cyclonic activity—Senator McLucas talked about that today—is wrong. It has been proved wrong but it is repeated by the dinosaurs in the Labor Party. The information they are relying on has not been peer reviewed. It has been taken from World Wildlife Fund journals, from Greenpeace journals—some German exchange student put it in his report—and produced as fact in the IPCC report. These are all used by the Labor Party to justify their great green tax.

What about the claim repeated by Senator McLucas today and first put around by Kevin Rudd that the Great Barrier Reef was going to disappear? Perhaps they did not have time to read the Australian today, where it said there is no evidence of coral bleaching and it did not appear that it was going to take place. This is a Labor Party that will do and say anything to justify their tax grab on the Australian consumers. They want to place the government at the very centre of the Australian economy so that every industry, every business, every person who wants to build this country and make it better and stronger economically has to go and ask for government largesse. Then the government will charge them for that largesse—which they are used to in the Labor Party—and then bequeath the funds as they see fit to the worthy serfs down there who will applaud them and say, ‘Thank you very much for looking after us, Mr Kevin Rudd and Ms Penny Wong and Co.’

This is not how Australia should function. This country is built on free enterprise. It is built on common sense. It is not built on a government doing everything and being at the very centre of the economic expansion of our country. Labor are misrepresenting their policy to the Australian people because they know it is not going to have an environmental impact. They know that Australia’s emissions are minimal, yet they know what they implement is going to be there forever. You cannot undo it. You cannot take it away. It gives rise to property rights that you cannot take away.

The coalition’s position, on the other hand, is built upon action that can be justified on environmental grounds, irrespective of whether or not the IPCC science is flawed. How can people complain about two million new trees? How can people complain about having a solar panel more accessible on their roof to provide electricity for them that is environmentally friendly? How can they complain about encouraging businesses to operate in a more environmentally friendly manner and in a cost-efficient manner that will not cost taxpayers $120 billion over 10 years? Make no mistake, that is what Labor are doing. They are going to suck $10 billion a year out of the productive economy and put it into government hands where they can determine who is worthy of it.

Let me tell you, the Australian people do not deserve this government. The Australian people deserve so much better. They deserve a government that is going to be responsible not only in dealing with the environment but responsible with taxpayer funds. If you want to know what is responsible, it is having environmental measures that will cost money—yes, they will cost money—but $3.2 billion is a whole lot less cost than the $120 billion the Labor Party are going to suck out the taxpayers’ pockets.