Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposite are attempting to entertain us, but the issue that is currently before the chair is Senator Abetz's motion to suspend standing orders. The debate about the clean energy future bills will come on today, should we get there notwithstanding the stunts from those opposite. All of the issues that the opposition want to raise about those particular bills can be raised at that point. I have got no doubt that they will continue to outline their extreme position. They will continue to oppose the clean energy package, as they have signalled. They will continue to say that they intend to repeal the legislation to take away the assistance to households, to take away the assistance to the land sector and to take away assistance to the food and foundry sectors. They will continue to advocate for a position which does not recognise that we need to act. Carbon pricing and climate change policy have been widely debated in Australia for more than a decade, yet those opposite continue to say they need more time.

Just to demonstrate how silly this motion is, it effectively says that it wants to put off the debate until the next parliament. We all know that the current motion cannot bind a future parliament in any event. The only thing it signals is that they do not intend to actually repeal the legislation. What they intend to do, should they be successful, is to bring the clean energy bills back up again. If this motion were successful and they acted according to it, they would bring it back. That is the silliness of the motion. I am sure they do not actually mean that, but that is the form of words they have put forward. If we were fortunate enough to win the next election then we would clearly want the legislation to continue, so it would be entirely consistent with our position rather than theirs. In any event, I think that is a slight distraction. It is only a stunt. This demonstrates it is only a stunt. It was designed as a stunt. It is a procedural motion that we do not need. However, they do want to continue to press the point rather than get on with the substantive debate on the clean energy bills because they do not want to debate the substantive issue. They want to continue to raise silly procedural points, as I have clearly demonstrated. If you were to take them at face value on this procedural motion, they would effectively be signalling that they would agree to these bills coming back in any event and we would continue.

Let me at least outline, in the short space of time I have, that they had an opportunity to work through this. At one point in time, I am sure, those opposite believed in climate change and believed in the need for action. In fact Senator Birmingham is one who advocated strongly for it. Work was undertaken by the Howard government, most notably by Peter Shergold, who concluded that pricing carbon through a market based mechanism was the best approach to tackling climate change. They now want to adopt a completely different position. The Multi-Party Climate Change Committee met for nine months before completing its work in July this year while the government's clean energy future package was developed. Those opposite had an opportunity to be part of that. They chose not to be. They have continuously shown their hand. The federal coalition do not want to participate in a clean energy future, do not want to participate in pricing carbon and do not want to contribute to ensuring that we can sequester carbon. The government has consulted widely, including through the business and NGO roundtables as part of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. We do want to ensure that we have a bright future. We do want to ensure that we can continue to have this framework in place for our future generations. The government, to that end, released the framework for its carbon pricing policy and sought feedback. The draft legislation has been out for consultation since late July and there were over 1,300 submissions on it. (Time expired)