Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to enter this debate. I must say that I hope I do not present just a wall of noise like we have heard from both Senator Joyce and Senator Mason. We really need to get back to some facts on this. Why are we doing this? Why are governments around the world saying that we need to deal with carbon pollution? We are dealing with carbon pollution because it is causing massive problems in the environment. The world is heating up. The tides are rising. We know this from all of the eminent scientists who have actually studied this problem. Every scientist who has expertise in this area is warning governments around the world that this is a problem.

It is not just individual scientists who are warning about the problem of global warming; it is also NASA. NASA have more expertise than anyone in the world. If you go on their website you will see that the globe is warming, that the tides are rising and that it has nothing to do with solar flares. It is carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere that is causing the problem. NASA says it, the Australian Academy of Science says it, the CSIRO says it and the Bureau of Meteorology says it.

I can understand this from Senator Joyce. Senator Joyce is a consistent carbon price opponent and global warming denier. But for somebody like Senator Mason to stand up and run this line when he actually supported a price on carbon under his previous leader, John Howard, is just hypocrisy of the highest kind. Yet we have got conservative leaders around the world actually accepting that this has to be done. John Howard accepted there had to be a price on carbon. Margaret Thatcher accepted there had to be a price on carbon. David Cameron—no relative of mine, I must say—accepts there has to be a price on carbon. Probably the former Leader of the Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, says there has to be a price on carbon. So when Malcolm Turnbull says there has to be a price on carbon and that the best way to put a price on carbon is through a market system, what happens? The extremists take over the Liberal Party. The extremists take over the Liberal Party and they destroy Malcolm Turnbull's leadership because he is prepared to accept the scientific reality of the need to put a price on carbon. They assassinate their own leader on the basis of his beliefs on carbon pricing.

Then what did they do? They said, 'We have got to do something because we need to deal with this issue on a political basis. We do not want to deal with it on a scientific basis but we need to deal with it on a political basis,' and they come up with a nonsense called Direct Action. Direct Action, according to the Treasury, will cost every family in this country $720 a year. Our approach on this is to make sure that families are looked after. We accept there will be a cost on families and we have factored that into our approach. The Treasury says the cost will be $9.90 a week. So what do we do? We are saying that most families will get $10.10 in return, that they will actually get better than the cost of the carbon tax. So we have got an economically viable and economically responsible position to take.

Yet what do we get from Senator Joyce? Senator Mason started talking about wrecking the economy, then at least he thought, 'I had better not go down this way,' so he stopped saying 'wrecking' and he said 'compromising'. He knows it will not wreck the economy. He knows it will not compromise the economy. This is the hypo­crisy of people like Senator Birmingham—'Backflip Birmingham'—and Senator Mason going around and changing their whole position on this. They know it will not wreck the economy, because people know that this is the best way to deal with a carbon price. (Time expired)