David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I endured the vaudeville of the last 20 minutes in courteous silence. What we have here is this Berlin-Moscow axis, this coalition of interests, which pits Green fundamentalists with climate change deniers. It is that coalition of interests which most fatally at the end of last year finally voted down the CPRS as it was then amended. So it strikes me that what we really have here in this censure motion is that after months of assiduous sabotage by the Greens party, by in fact delivering to the coalition and to the climate change deniers a spectacular victory on the CPRS at the end of last year, they now have the political hide to come into this place and complain about a lack of progress in advancing those important environmental interests that the government sets itself so determinedly to accomplish.

This is an extraordinary act of two-faced politics, where on the one hand the attempts of this government to introduce a carbon price is sabotaged, while on the other hand a censure motion is brought into this place complaining about the government’s lack of progress in these issues more generally. This is indicative of a party that would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. This is a party that will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In striking down the CPRS at the end of last year, in delivering those five votes to Tony Abbott and his climate change sceptic party, the Greens stand accused and convicted of having sunk that piece of legislation that would have done so very much for this country, so very much for our continuing effort to deliver action on climate change.

My favourite component of the censure motion is not part (1) but, rather, part (2). Part (2) calls on the government to put in place a unified ministry and department of climate change and energy. I cannot help but suspect that here we have one small, cherished insight into what must be the grand reorganisation of government planned in the central presidium of the Greens party. It would be with wonderment and joy that I would observe the remainder of their plan—their ministry for truth, their ministry for no energy, their ministry for a command economy—because to introduce this unified ministry in this form is of course a nonsensical incursion into government and the business of government which, by their own admission, they are ill-equipped to handle. Whether they headhunt Yogi Bear or Hugo Chavez to head this glorious new department of theirs, it will not change the fact that the failure to make progress in the critical area of CPRS rests at their feet and not at the feet of the government. They made themselves the handmaidens to the coalition and its environmental policies, and they must now wear that crown of thorns through 2010.

I note that with the Birmingham amendment the coalition has quite correctly moved to extricate itself from the proposition that this grand new department designed in the Greens central presidium should go forward. Of course that is a correct separation—and perhaps the first chink in this Berlin-Moscow axis. There is of course one outstanding example of ‘gross and systemic failure’, and that is the actions and the words of Tony Abbott and his coalition.