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

No, I will not, Senator, support a committee like that because I believe that lets down the nation. Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I think we have to accept our responsibility in tackling the enormous threat to our economy, employment, the lifestyle of the future of this nation’s great assets like the Great Barrier Reef, our biodiversity generally, the snowfields and the Murray-Darling Basin which are not just threatened by climate change but are already affected by climate change and face—the Great Barrier Reef for one—death by mid-century through climate change and acidification through this stacking of the polluting of the atmosphere with coal. It is our responsibility to tackle this responsibly and which the opposition chose no proclivity to act upon in our time.

That committee will be working hard to achieve an outcome, and we are committed to it and we are committed to climate change action as best this parliament can arrange in the coming years. My colleague Senator Christine Milne is vice-chair of that committee. She has an enormous knowledge of not just climate change but the best way forward for us to not just see it as a challenge but as an opportunity as we green our economy and take full advantage of a new technological age in which we can tackle climate change while boosting the economy, the job outcome and the advantages of massive export income that comes with that. One only has to look at the success of, for example, Germany to understand that that is the direction this sunny country of ours should be going in.

Amongst other things that have been established in this agreement with the government is that there will be a leaders’ debate commission set up so that we do not get the farce of jockeying between the two old parties on how leaders’ debates in the run to future elections should go. An independent commission will look at all matters to ensure that the public sees a reasonable debate between parliamentary leaders—and I do not exclude future Greens leaders from that; they should be included.