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

The baying poddy calves of the opposition are simply underlining the fact that they are squibbing and letting down the average Australian because they are simply going to allow the big polluters to continue to pollute. We had an example of that in Senator Abetz’s speech. He said that the prescription that the Greens, the Independents and the Labor Party government are looking at takes into account transport. That is exactly what the opposition did when they supported the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. They supported a price on the cost of fossil fuel emissions including transport and they had an offset arrangement there. So they supported that and now they do not. Senator Abetz said that in Tasmania there would be a bigger impost on transport than anywhere else. We remain flexible and open-minded about how the proposed price on carbon coming from transport systems is levied. My colleague Senator Milne has made it clear that one of the things we want to see is increased cheap, fast, efficient public transport in this country so that people have a real option when it comes to reducing carbon pollution in the atmosphere.

When you look a little further you will see that another thing Senator Abetz will not tackle, has not tackled and never can tackle is the biggest polluter of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in Tasmania, which is Forestry Tasmania’s logging of the native forests of Tasmania. That produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the transport system of not just Tasmania but the whole economy. Senator Abetz is the chief at the gate of that continued pollution occurring at the expense of the transport system and of everybody else. Not only that, he is the chief purveyor of a mill proposed by Gunns to pollute the Tamar Valley, which would release 10 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum, which is the equivalent of a two per cent national increase on the pollution quotient. That is Senator Abetz for you. That is support of the polluters against the interests of the average Australian and that is writ large in this opposition.

I say to the opposition, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President: if you want to repeal a government, Independent and Greens arrangement to tackle climate change which converts into legislation through this parliament—and you have been welcomed to join this but have failed to do so—go right ahead. Come on in spinner, because we will take you on in this next election in every country town, in every suburb, in every city of Australia as the polluters’ party, which you are. You are the big polluters’ party against the interests of the ordinary Australian. That is the difference. You do not like it but that is what you are going to get. So come on in. If that is what you want to do we will take you on, very gladly. Thank you very much.

I would have thought that an opposition which claims to be conservative and which claims to be economically literate would have made a decision different to that and would have seen its responsibility differently. But the problem is that they have a leader whose mantra is, ‘I will oppose everything.’ And isn’t it wearing thin on the public? They all roll their eyes when they talk to me about it. They are the negative knockers brigade of the opposition, the obstructors, the people who want to stop progress in Australia in 2011. They are the people who are economically destructive in this modern Australia.

Sir Nicholas Stern reminded the world—