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

Through you, Mr Deputy President, I assure those in the gallery that there is usually a far more serious debate in this place than they just heard from Senator Fierravanti-Wells. Here we are in a period where the global financial crisis is still destroying jobs around the rest of the world, where the US and Europe are trying to deal with huge problems, and what do we get? We get an absolute comedy routine from the opposition. Senator Mason's response was not much better; that was merely a comedy routine as well. If you know the coalition's policies—and I use the plural because you never know what their policy on climate change will be from one day to another—you will know that the coalition adopted a price on carbon to go to the last election that John Howard fought and lost. John Howard was arguing for a price on carbon.

Since people are showing things around, I will do a little advertising here. I picked up a book today called The Australian Moment: How We Were Made for These Times by George Megalogenis, one of the key economic commentators and writers in this country. He describes how John Howard dealt with climate change. He says that John Howard was a climate change chameleon: he changed whenever it suited him from one position to another. It is not just John Howard who is a climate change chameleon; the coalition are also climate change chameleons. They change their position whenever they think it suits their political position.

This is what George Megalogenis said about John Howard in this book, which was launched today and which I recommend everybody get a copy of to see the truth about the Howard government's position. In January 2007, it says, John Howard offered $10 billion for a federal takeover of the Murray-Darling without consulting Treasury for advice on the numbers. Those great economic managers over on the coalition side offered $10 billion and they did not even go to the Treasury to ask what it would mean and what it would do. So that puts the lie to the argument of economic responsibility on the other side. He said in June that he became a convert to a market based mechanism to deal with climate change after receiving his own report written by Peter Shergold, the head of the Prime Minister's department.

If you do not know, Peter Shergold is highly respected around the place. He was one of the key advisers to John Howard and he wrote a report that said we should put a price on carbon and it should be based on a carbon emissions scheme. John Howard promised a domestic emissions trading scheme, a cap-and-trade system, beginning no later than 2012. We heard all that nonsense—and the chameleons were at it again over there. He said for years he had argued against Australia moving before anyone else in the region—and now he wants to go first! This is John Howard. He wanted to go before anybody with a price on carbon, as Australia had done with tariffs. 'Australia will continue to lead internationally on climate change,' he said, 'globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, not in a way that lectures and moralises but in a way that builds support for global action to meet the enormous challenge of climate change.'

That destroys the argument Senator Mason was putting up that the coalition are acting responsibly by not moving on climate change. The coalition's own report, the Shergold report—and anyone from the coalition who stands up after me will have to deal with the Shergold report—says you have to act early to deal with climate change because climate change is real; climate change is what your grandkids are going to be living with in the future; we have to deal with it, and the most economically responsible way to deal with it is by putting a price on carbon. These lunatics do not realise that. (Time expired)