Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This dumbing down and the misleading information that the coalition continue to carry on with is sheer laziness and sheer political point-scoring. It shows that there is little care about this issue of climate change. The fact is that there is so much overwhelming science out there, which has been in place for some time now, asking us to act on this issue and telling us that, if we do not act, the cost for the economy will be even greater, Senator Cormann. But, despite that, you continue to ignore all that scientific evidence and continue to oppose. You prefer to play with politics than to play with real policy, real issues and things that are actually going to move this country forward and make a difference to the lives of many people.

I understand, to draw on the science, that some of the effects, such as sea level change, will come into being out of our lifetimes. But it is our duty and it is up to us to ensure that we lead the way for the next generation, for our kids and for their kids, that we leave this planet a better place, that we treat it better than we have been treating it up until now. Why? Because we know that we are damaging it if we do not do so, and we have a chance to turn that around. This is a chance to turn that around, to do what is right for our families, for our people and for our environment.

We are only here for a certain amount of time. We are only here in the Senate for a short amount of time, but we are privileged with a task, and that task is to ensure that we change things for the better for our people and for our environment. This is the time to do that. It is not the time to play politics, to get up and make another 15-minute speech about she said, he said and who said what. What is that going to do for anyone? How is that going to change anyone living in Australia in the future? It is not going to do anything for our environment, for our people, for our businesses. We on this side of the Senate, the Labor Party, take the issue of climate change seriously, and that is why we have acted. That is why we have put this package of bills through the House and before the Senate: to ensure that we move things and turn things around.

Having said that, 12 years ago, when you were in power, when you were in government, it seemed like you were going to do the same thing. But you conveniently forget that now because it does not suit you. It does not suit your politics.

Senator Back interjecting—

The rest of the world is acting. China, India, the EU and states of the United States are acting. It is incorrect to say that the rest of the world is not acting. They are acting. They are acting in a number of ways, and why? Because they know that certain parts of the world are not even going to be there in the future. Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu are not even going to exist. What goes when they go? Not just the people who lived on them but their culture, their history. We, like all the other nations in the world, have the opportunity to do something about this, to turn it around. That is why those on this side of the chamber take this issue very seriously. This is not about buck-passing or politics, which is all that seems to come from those on the other side. There is a sense of laziness, of lying to the Australian people, of spreading misinformation, of just playing politics.

There is a lot of evidence from around the world that we do need to act on climate change. That is what we are doing. We are proud to be doing it. We are not proud to be doing it just because we are a Labor Party; we are proud to be doing it for our kids, for our families, for the rest of this nation. We want to ensure that whilst we are in government we do as much as we can to ensure that we turn around something that we have so much science on. We know that we have been impacting on our environment now for so long. The science is clear. The time to act is now. There is a clear consensus amongst the climate scientists that climate change is real, and that is why we are acting to reduce carbon pollution—because of the serious effects of climate change that we as humans have caused in part and will continue to cause unless we do something about reducing our carbon pollution in this country.