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

I never said it would never rain again. You have had your opportunity to speak and tell it as you see it. The fact is that scientists are predicting not only greater heat events but greater freezing events as well. It is hard for some people to get their minds around that. It is a challenge for all of us. I accept that these predictions are being borne out. What we have seen is the equal warmest year, globally, in recorded history, the hottest oceans of northern Australia in recorded history, some of the most devastating floods in recorded history and one of the most violent and destructive cyclones in recorded history. These fit into a pattern of prediction which has been developing in the scientific community.

The opposition says discussing this matter is out of place, yet it was okay for the Leader of the National Party to be condemning the failure to build more dams, which is a very political question, as early as 2 or 3 January and to be wading into the causative factors of the magnitude of floods. When it comes to talking about climate change, because of the vulnerability of the coal industry in particular, you must not talk about it. The opposition can play out their own fears and be self-censoring on this, but this is a matter for responsible and mature debate—and that debate will be had.

The Greens position is that the mining industry superprofits tax, as outlined by Treasury, ought to have been applied. We disagree with the government reducing that superprofits tax to the point where, according to evidence to Senate estimates last week, as much as $10 billion per annum will be lost to public expenditure. The opposition obviously thinks that the average taxpayer in Australia should make up the shortfall in funding for programs rather than the big iron ore and coal corporations—which by the way export a great deal of their profits overseas—paying to assist this nation to deal with its need for infrastructure and services in the future as well as the unforeseens, which I thinks are foreseens, although we cannot specify them, of the huge cost impacts of climate change. At the end of that spectrum we come to Sir Nicholas Stern’s projection that before the end of this century the impact of climate change on economies may be seen to be between five per cent and 20 per cent loss of gross national wealth, or productivity.

This will have a huge economic impact. The opposition may care to put its head in the coal pit on the matter, but the Greens will not, because it is responsible to be dealing now with this extraordinary projection of threat to the wellbeing of Australians and not leave it to our children or grandchildren to do that. Mr Abbott would not collect $1 from the miners through a reasonable tax on superprofits from the ore, which belongs to the Australian people. He would expect the Australian people to forgo the benefits of that arrangement, recommended by Treasury, which the Greens endorse. An amount of $148 billion over the coming 10 years may well be lost to Australians, to pay for such things as flood, cyclone, bushfire, hailstorm and sea level rise damage. That is the opposition’s choice, but it is not one that the Greens will subscribe to. We believe that the polluters should pay and we believe that those who cause the damage, with eyes wide open, should pay. We have known about this for decades. Indeed, I saw former Senator Richardson saying, quite rightly, on Q&A the other night that he first brought a bill on climate change before cabinet in 1988. Everybody has their eyes open on this issue and it is not responsible for us to say that, because the coal industry has not made provision for the damage it will do to the rest of society anymore than the tobacco industry did, it should now escape a reasonable tax which may help the country to adjust to the impact of climate change. That is not responsible.

Yesterday we saw Mr Abbott at a petrol station, talking about how he is going to create a popular revolt against the potential for fossil fuel emissions to impact on the economy, suggesting that it be ignored. That is basically what he is about: take no action. But what it is really about is Mr Abbott saying about the causers, the big polluters: ‘I am going to let them off the hook. Neither will we have a mining tax, to reasonably share with the Australian people the extraordinary profits they’re getting’—and I think they export 70 per cent of their profits overseas—‘nor will we ask them to be responsible for their part and pay a fair share for the damage as a result of climate change enhanced destructive weather events in Australia.’ Mr Abbott can shield the big coal corporations against the interests of the average Australian, low-income and middle-income earners in particular, but the Greens do not agree with that. This will be part of the debate about economic responsibility over the next century.