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

Senator Birmingham, you are pathetic. You are not only pathetic in terms of your policy backflips; you are pathetic in terms of trying to tell the chair how to run the show here. It just won't work. No wonder you are all getting agitated, because what this report does is actually expose the climate change deniers in the coalition. They do not believe that we should do anything about climate change. They do not believe that anything is happening in relation to climate change. They listen to Alan Jones and they come back and regurgitate Alan Jones's rants on climate change. Senator Birmingham came into this Senate advocating to do something on climate change, but what do we get from him now? We get backflips—a big backflip on climate change. He has absolutely no credibility. I will not be lectured by Senator Birmingham on climate change or on any position on any issue in this parliament. One of the biggest backflips ever seen in this chamber was this backflip by Senator Birmingham.

When Senator Birmingham came into parliament he did support doing something about climate change. He would have supported the view of the former coalition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, that the market should determine how you deal with climate change. He would support that. But, unfortunately, when the extremists in the National Party—maybe they are one and the same thing—got together and rolled their former leader, Malcolm Turnbull, Senator Birmingham said, 'Well, I'd better ditch all my values, ditch all of the positions I've adopted on climate change and adopt direct action'—a position the coalition puts in this report, a position that has been condemned by anyone who looks at it as absolutely environmentally unachievable and as economic nonsense. That was what came out of this report—that direct action does not work.

We had many people giving evidence on direct action. We had the department basically say that the coalition's abatement figures were nonsense, that they were never going to get any abatement worth anything like what they were seeing. They were saying that their projections of 160 megatonnes of abatement would not be achieved, that their abatement figure is 20 million tonnes shy of reaching a five per cent abatement. What people have to remember is that the coalition have got the same target as the government. The difference between the government and the coalition is that we have got a plan and a policy that will deliver the abatement, and the coalition have got a con job. Malcolm Turnbull said that basically the best thing about it is that you could just close it down.

I know that the coalition always get a bit agitated when you mention their former leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who at least has some principle on this issue—far more principle than Senator Birmingham, who would backflip at the change of a leader. Change the leader; change the policy. That is Senator Birmingham's position—absolutely no credibility. But that is not unusual in the coalition. I respect the National Party because they do not make any bones about not believing in climate change. They do not make any bones about it. They say it is all a nonsense and they stand up and argue that position. Senator Birmingham knows their position is absolute nonsense but will not take them on in the party room, will not take them on in debates on this issue.