Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The depth of your talent? I am happy to discuss that some other time. It is a very shallow gene pool.

This is how serious the Liberal Party are: they support a motion that seeks to take Energy into a Climate Change portfolio, which as I say is not something that was reflected in their decisions about their shadow ministry structure in December, and now we find they treat this issue so seriously that they send in a shadow parliamentary secretary in a censure motion. I will go back after this debate to see when a major political party in this country failed to send a senior frontbencher into the debate when they were supporting a censure motion. I have not had time to check on that and I am happy to have a look at the record, but I would be amazed if an alternative government in this country sought to prosecute a censure against the whole government and did not actually send in one of its leadership group. That shows that the Liberal Party are not serious about it; it shows that the Greens are not serious about it. This is a joke. It is not taken seriously by this government. The nature of the motion and the nature of the approach clearly indicates that this is more stunt than serious attempt to debate the issues or make a case against the government. No case has been made, and Senator Brown did not attempt to make a case in moving this motion.

As my major response to this motion, I want to take up the reference to delivery of climate change programs. It is interesting that they left out the major climate change program that this government has introduced—the CPRS, and the move to try to set up an emissions trading scheme in this country. That was the largest measure introduced by this government to try to tackle the serious nature of climate change. The motion rightly refers to a range of other measures that this government has introduced: the government having made a serious attempt across a range of areas to tackle climate change and the protection of our environment. The list shows how serious the government has been by detailing some of those measures—by no means all, but some of them.

If you are going to be serious about a debate on the government’s climate change programs, you have to start with the CPRS. You have to start with our attempt to introduce an emissions trading scheme. That is left off the list provided by the Greens in support of the Liberal Party. Why? Because they have blocked the government’s attempts to introduce that legislation. They have twice opposed that legislation in the Senate and prevented us from implementing the major measure that we took to the last election to address climate change. So they are saying to us, ‘Oh well, we are concerned about these other measures,’ when in fact they have used every endeavour at their disposal to prevent us honouring our key election commitment in this area. That shows a level of hypocrisy in those supporting this motion.

We have attempted to work with the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Greens to fulfil our election promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme in this country. We are now having a third go at that, and we had a procedural stunt pulled yesterday to try to prevent us from proceeding to having it debated a third time. I am not a great one for mandate theory. I have heard people make outlandish and unreasonable claims about mandates for many years in this place, but I have generally resisted making some of those more extreme claims. But if there ever were a policy that came before the Senate where one could claim a mandate, I think the ETS would be it. At the last election it was the policy both of this government and of the former government, the coalition.