Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot allow the minister's suggestion that we oppose carbon abatement to stand. The minister well knows that the coalition has long talked about—longer than the government, in fact—the great potential for soil carbon and for abatement through advances in soil carbon farming technologies. The minister well knows that they are issues that are being highlighted and that have stood consistently in the coalition's policy since it was released at the beginning of last year. They were also highlighted prior to that not just by our current leader but also by our former leader. Our consistency in supporting this concept is strong. Our consistency is shown in a policy document that has stood from the beginning of last year.

During that time the government has moved all over the place in relation to how it wants to tackle climate change issues. At the time we released our policy document outlining our support for the concept of soil carbon—this is like a trip down memory lane—Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister of this country, the government was arguing for an emissions trading scheme and we outlined an alternative way forward. As the weeks turned into months, at some stage Ms Gillard managed to roll Mr Rudd on the emissions trading scheme and knock that out, and so you no longer had a policy supporting an emissions trading scheme.