Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Very few do. So our competitor nations, the energy rich, trade exposed nations are not moving on this. It is a lie.

But it gets worse, and this perhaps is the most sinister part of the entire debate. Under great heat Senator Wong, Mr Combet and the Prime Minister, even when the facts are forced down their throats and they finally concede, 'Well, perhaps our competitor countries are not moving sufficiently quickly and perhaps they should be doing more,' they still argue that, even in the absence of a sufficiently comprehensive global agreement, it is still in our national interest. That is the argument that Senator Wong has made over the last week and a half, that even in the absence of a sufficiently comprehensive global agreement, even in the absence of activity by our competitor nations, even if those energy rich, trade exposed nations do nothing, it is in our national interest. That is the great deceit, a deceit far greater in my view than the Prime Minister's lie before the last election. Often under great pressure Senator Wong over last week has said, 'Oh well, it doesn't really matter what other countries do.' Yes, it does, because if other nations do something we just go backwards. We lose our comparative advantage in energy export, we go backwards.

Labor argues fundamentally that it is in Australia's national interest to go first irrespective of what the rest of the world does even when we know it will have no impact on global emissions, which are still rising, and no impact on climate change. That is the debate in one paragraph—magic from the other side. That argument will kill the Labor Party over the medium term. In one paragraph that is the argument. If it was such a good idea to go first in the absence of a global agreement, if it was such a good idea to move straightaway before other trade exposed, energy rich nations, then why didn't the United States of America do something? Why not Canada? Why wouldn't China do more, why wouldn't Russia do more, why wouldn't India do more? Because they know to move first, to move unilaterally, is against their national interest. The bill is now through. The Governor-General will sign it into law. The fundamental bastardry is this—