Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always love it when you hear someone say the words, 'I am not going to be scaremongering,' and then they go on and do nothing but try to scaremonger. It is a shame that the coalition really has had no credibility in recent times on this issue at all. There was a time when John Howard was Prime Minister that the coalition actually believed that climate change was real and that it was man made. Nothing has changed since then; climate change is real and it is caused by human activity. We as a generation that can afford to do something about it need to own up, take responsibility and do something about it. I am not going to stand here and do nothing and then be judged by my children and grandchildren as part of the generation that was so selfish in its use of the Earth's resources and knew that it had to do something about it. The science is clear. It is there. I am not going to be judged and condemned by future generations for knowing that something had to be done, knowing what it was we had to do and then doing nothing. I think that is an abrogation of our responsibility.

The reason Senator Nash cannot come to grips with that is that she does not believe in climate change. She does not believe the science. She does not believe anything needs to be done. Her coalition party has the most ridiculous policy that one could possibly imagine. It says that the polluters should continue to be able to pollute for nothing. It says that they should not have to pay for the pollution but that the coalition will take taxpayers' dollars and give those polluters money to pollute less. They can pollute as much as they like for free under the coalition's policy and taxpayers' money will be given to them to help them pollute less.

We on this side of the chamber believe that it is important to put market mechanisms in to drive change in the economy and to actually put a price on pollution. I do not think it is right that people can pollute our environment for nothing. We know that when you put a price on those things it changes the market behaviour. We know it will drive innovation and change the way businesses conduct their activities and it will directly reduce the amount of their emissions. That is how the market works. If you put a price on something that people have to pay and that then flows down through the system, people will avoid paying that price. If they can reduce their emissions and do things in cleaner ways, they will. That is the way the market works. This is a market based solution.

Unfortunately, the coalition have walked away from that completely. It is what they had as their policy going into the 2007 election. That is what they went to the Australian people with. That was after considerable modelling done by their party when in government. They came up with the solution that an ETS was the most cost-effective and efficient way to go. Nothing has changed in the science or the evidence, except that it is becoming clearer and clearer.

I am not a denier. I know that there are companies polluting out there. I know pollution is affecting our environment. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or any other sort of scientist to understand that. The science is settled. It is there. We on this side of the chamber do not believe in every crackpot that the other side might be able to run up who says, 'I have some formal qualifications; therefore, the overwhelming science of the world's scientists is wrong.' I thought we had moved on from those times. The science is clearly settled. We have an absolute obligation to act because we can act. We know what we have to do and this government have the courage to do it. We will do this thing. We will introduce the carbon price mechanism, we will drive change in our economy and we will make a significant and ongoing difference to our environment. That is why we are doing it. We are doing it for our kids and our grandkids. We are the generation—it has been primarily us—who have used more of the Earth's resources than any generation before us and probably more than any generation in the future will. We have an absolute obligation to act. I am absolutely proud to be part of the government that will take these hard decisions and will act on pricing carbon.