Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Could I finish. The challenge of climate change is still there to be addressed, but we actually have to make a judgment on whether what is on the table is going to make a positive difference or whether it is going to make things worse.

Here is the crux of the argument: in 2007 there was a general expectation that countries like the US and others would introduce cap-and-trade emissions-trading schemes. There was a general expectation that there would be an appropriately comprehensive global framework around pricing emissions agreed to in Copenhagen—and, of course, Copenhagen was a complete failure. And you need not go any further than the assessment of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as to what his views were about the success or failure of the Copenhagen conference.

All throughout 2008, 2009 and 2010 we had the Garnaut review report; we had the government's green paper and white paper; we had a number of parliamentary inquiries; and we have a clear public understanding, and the understanding in this parliament, of what a price on carbon in Australia would do in the absence of an improvement in an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price emissions. All throughout 2008, 2009 and 2010, in the context of a lot of public debate, in the context of a lot of discussion, Senate inquiries and House of Representatives inquiries and policy debates within the various parties, there clearly was an increased and improved understanding of what a price on carbon in Australia in the absence of a price on carbon imposed by most of our trade competitors would (1) do to Australia's national interests, in terms of the impact on our economy, on jobs, on costs of living, and (2) have on the impact on global emissions. Of course, the conclusion after those processes all throughout 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 was that, in the absence of an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price emissions, that in the absence of countries like the US and others deciding to price emissions in their countries through an emissions trading scheme or carbon tax, it was not in Australia's national interest to impose a price on carbon outside of such a framework.

If you look at all of the comments on the public record, whether from me or others, all throughout 2008, all throughout 2009, all throughout 2010, you will find that our position in 2008-09 was that we should not make a judgment on Australia's decision on a carbon pricing regime before Copenhagen. Indeed, the position when Malcolm Turnbull was our leader was 'not before Copenhagen'. Our position was that, if the government was going to put this legislation to a vote before Copenhagen, we would vote against it—and indeed we did. We voted against the government's legislation—together with the Greens, I might add. The Greens were sitting there right next to us voting against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, initially in the House of Representatives in late June 2009 and then in the Senate on 13 August 2009. I remember the day well! We voted against the Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme—that is, the coalition, Senator Xenophon, Senator Fielding and the Greens. We all voted against it because we all shared the view that what the government put on the table was not effective action on climate change. It was a scheme which, in the coalition's judgment, was just going to push up the cost of everything, cost jobs and put Australia under pressure without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. And of course, the Australian people are entitled to believe that after a lot of backwards and forwards, after a lot of toing and froing, our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, came to the same conclusion—because not only did Prime Minister Gillard tell then Prime Minister Rudd to kill the CPRS, not only did she tell him not to go ahead with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; she also, of course, went to the last election with the most emphatic promise of them all, with the most emphatic promise any Prime Minister could ever make, when, looking the Australian people straight in the eye, through the barrel of a camera, in that memorable Channel 10 moment, in the morning, five days out from the election, she said to the Australian people:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

The reason she said that is that no doubt at that point in time Prime Minister Gillard, like the rest of us, realised that it was not in our national interest to impose a carbon tax in Australia when our trade competitors in other parts of the world were not doing the same. All we are doing is making higher-emitting businesses in other parts of the world more competitive than even the most environmentally efficient equivalent businesses in Australia. That is what the debate is all about.

So, Minister Wong, you can come in here and quote from my first speech as much as you like, but you know very well that the world has changed over the past four years. You know very well that the debate on Australia's national interests, in the context of carbon pricing, has changed.