Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the participants in this censure motion debate. I end by repeating what I said when I began: it is a very serious step for any Senate to censure the government and, inter alia, several ministers involved in the failure of due process, proper accountability and delivery of programs, and the ignoring of advice which could have prevented those failures. We have had from a number of speakers a reiteration of the litany of problems in the $2 billion programs that have led to this censure motion coming before the Senate. Those problems include the potential loss of thousands of jobs, the blighting of hopes of some 250,000 householders who have had their houses audited for potential green loans—and now only 1,000 loans will be delivered to households—and the massive loss of confidence among people who have skilled up to audit houses and to take part in insulation programs and other components of this spectrum of delivery of climate change programs.

The awesome failure of control and due prudence in the delivery of the Home Insulation Program has led to 92 house fires, which may be related to the deaths of four young Australians and which has resulted in a large number of investors coming into an industry that has now suddenly been faced with effective closure and a consequent huge loss for most people who did make the investment. When we look at the solar hot water rebate, which on Friday was reduced from $1,600 to $1,000, we have to ask: what are the businesses that have ordered systems for clients supposed to do with the cancelled orders?

This is a real problem for businesses now as a result of the mismanagement of this program by the government and the ministers involved. Who is going to cover their cash crisis? Is this indeed not systemic failure? Whether we look at the failure of the insulation program, at the collapsing of the renewable energy target program, particularly the wind energy component of that, at the application of photovoltaics out of solar panels, at solar hot water systems or at the other components of the program, including the delivery of renewable energy to remote communities in Australia, it is easy to go to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts and say that he has failed. There is no doubt that in terms of due prudence and management he has failed.

But several ministries are involved. When it comes to the colossal failure of governance with these multibillion dollar programs, all roads lead to Rudd. It is at the Prime Minister’s office that the buck stops. This is a Prime Minister who controls his departments and the administration of governance with a great deal of personal interest for a lack of initiative given to people who are within his cabinet, I believe. The Prime Minister himself has taken responsibility for the circumstances in which the government now finds itself.

I cannot recollect ever having heard such a failure of defence of a censure motion as we have witnessed here today. The Leader of the Government in the Senate and then the Minister for Climate Change and Water and finally a backbencher all failed to address the central thrust of the censure motion. None of them addressed the massive incompetence, the failure of management and the failure to heed proper warning that has led to this problem. The nearest we got to it were 10 words from the Minister for Climate Change and Water when she said, ‘There were problems with the program; the government has closed it.’ There was no defence at all of what has been so eloquently put by Senator Milne and Senator Troeth and others as the problem and which, moreover, has been emblazoned across the newspapers, television and radio for weeks now in this country.

This is a massive failure of governance, and it requires the government to face this censure motion. We have found in the Senate this afternoon a complete failure to address the problems which the government was charged to defend. There is no defence. The government has no defence. It has put forward no defence. The best it could do was to go to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and blame the Greens and the opposition for the failure to get that scheme through this parliament. Given the record of every other climate measure that has gone through this parliament and that has ended up so manifestly mismanaged, one has to wonder how gross the mismanagement of the CPRS—with its more than $100 billion program—would have been had it gone ahead.

I also reiterate, seeing the government has drawn attention to the CPRS, that it was a determined failure before it began. This is a CPRS which aimed at a five per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in this nation in the next decade plus. But, when you take into account the ability of the big polluters to buy credits from overseas and do nothing about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this country, it could well have led to quite the reverse—not just less than a five per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions but an actual increase in greenhouse gas emissions while $24 billion compensation went to the polluters.

What I would like to have heard from the minister for climate change is a more coherent and positive reaction to the Greens proposal, which has been endorsed by Professor Garnaut and, I heard today, Mr Shergold, for a carbon levy to be implemented with an increasing price in the coming few years until a proper and responsible target system is brought into play. That system, which does not allow for external credits to be bought by the polluters, would ensure that greenhouse gas emissions in this country fall in the immediately coming years. That surely has to be the baseline test of any credible scheme that is going to tackle climate change.

I would have thought the Minister for Climate Change and Water, who chose to attack the Greens for voting against her prescription for failure in the CPRS, would have been much more positive, and maybe would have given to the chamber an account of why it is taking so long for us to get a response from the government on this positive program, which we Greens have brought forward—let alone acknowledgement of the fact that, while the opposition obstructed, it was the Greens who delivered the stimulus program which helped this country, during the last 12 months, avoid recession and massive job losses.

We are a responsible entity on this crossbench. We are determined to continue to act that way. We have brought forward this censure motion with a great deal of deliberation. We do not do it lightly; we certainly do not do it lightly to a government in its first term of office. But the failure of governance here is so gross, it affects so many tens of thousands of Australian citizens, the programs have been so manifestly poorly applied—despite the warnings of the government’s own consultants 12 months ago—that the government absolutely deserves to be censured in the way in which this motion puts it.

We will not divide on the matter of the motion’s call for a unified ministry and department of climate change and energy, but let me say this: I heard Senator Feeney, who diverted Labor preferences, unknown to Labor voters, who did not have a say in this, and helped Senator Fielding take a seat in this place—and I congratulate Senator Fielding—instead of another Labor or Greens senator, attack the Greens in here. Senator Feeney, the architect of that, was attacking the Greens in here today. I want to say this to him: he, like the leader and the minister, left the chamber after their speeches. That is the determination they have to defend the government in this place. But let me say this: five per cent was the target, with a $24 billion price-tag given to the big polluters, had the best outcome emerged from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme put forward by the government.

Senator Milne gave us the story of the Prime Minister being in the Hunter Valley in support for the coalmining industry. Prime Ministers and premiers of course will do that. But in the last few weeks we have heard Mr Palmer from Queensland announce this massive program for selling, from his one scheme only, 30 million tonnes of coal a year to China. That would lead to the increase of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere—produced in Australia, burnt in China—equivalent to increasing Australia’s greenhouse gas output by 12 per cent. So in one fell swoop a massive coal export operation—not helping Australia but to be burnt in China—would more than double any gain made by the $24 billion compensation-to-polluters prescription that this government has put forward. You can see the problem, the muddled thinking that is within government.

If you do not bring energy and climate change within the same portfolio, you have the internal contradiction of the government, which on the one hand wants to put a $24 billion compensation program, producing a five per cent result, but at the same time wants to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to cancel that and give us a plus-12 per cent result in greenhouse gas emissions. You can see the inherent contradiction within this government. It is that sort of contradiction that we believe would be eliminated by the creation of such a department, were it to be properly equipped and financed and be headed by a competent minister.

So I commend this motion to the chamber. The government has been incompetent in the management of these massive programs, which use taxpayers’ money and ought to have delivered a marvellous dividend to this nation but, instead of that, at minimum, has delivered blighted hopes, expectations, business investment and job prospects for thousands of Australian citizens. I commend the motion to the Senate.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Birmingham’s) be agreed to.