Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party and the Greens get together. We have just had a motion pass a little while ago to allow more time for government business, which we like to do. But every time the Labor Party and the Greens move these motions, the element they take the time from is a discussion we have in this chamber called government documents.

There are, on average, no less than a dozen government papers tabled in this Senate every day. They cover the whole spectrum of government activities: the annual report of every department; and the reports of all of the thousands of government agencies. It gives this chamber, as representative of the Australian people, the opportunity to look through those reports, question the government on them and point out some obvious flaws. But the government does not like that because it hates scrutiny of its departments and of its agencies. So whenever it needs to save a bit of time what does the government do? It gets rid of government documents and thereby curtails the opportunity of this Senate to look into the literally hundreds of thousands of decisions made by the government that can only be looked at in this chamber.

I have diverted myself from the motion before the chair; I return to the Clean Energy Amendment (International Emissions Trading and Other Measures) Bill.

Normally—again, I explain this for those who are listening and might not fully understand what we are talking about—there is a process in the Senate. This process was introduced many years ago by the coalition parties, at that time supported by the Democrats—the Greens were not around and they will not be around in a couple of years either—and the Labor Party. This process was about making sure that important bills that came through this chamber had the proper scrutiny. The rule was—and I am paraphrasing it—you would bring in a bill in one session of parliament and would not deal with it in full debate until the next session. That gave senators the opportunity to look into the full aspects. It gave all those people who might be affected by these bills the opportunity to look at them and to make submissions. It also gave the Senate the opportunity to do what it does so very well—that is, to conduct inquiries into bits of legislation whereby you advertise, get people in to give evidence, consider that evidence and make reports. That process, if it is done properly, takes several weeks.

But what are the government doing in the case of this legislation? They will introduce it this week, and we will talk about it next week—in the last week of sitting of this year of parliament. I digress by saying that again since the Labor Party has taken over the Treasury benches, the Senate sits for shorter and shorter periods of time. They do not like scrutiny and they do not like debate. Next week, in the last three days of sitting for this year, when the media and the general public are looking towards Christmas and the holidays, they bring through these controversial bills. They will guillotine discussion on these bills, and so these bills will not be properly assessed. As I asked right at the beginning: why? It is because the last thing the Labor Party want discussed is the carbon tax that the Prime Minister promised she would never introduce.

This particular bill, the Clean Energy Amendment (International Emissions Trading and Other Measures) Bill, deserves and requires very extensive investigation. This bill is proposing that Australia ties its economy to the European economy. Again, you do not have to be a world renowned economist to work out that the European economy is in turmoil. It is a tragic indictment of years of left-wing governments spending more than they ever earned. If it had not been for Germany, a right-wing government, earning the money to bail out all the left-wing governments in Europe, then Europe would be in an even worse predicament. At the moment, the European economy is in turmoil, yet the Labor Party want our economy to join the European economy. I guess there is method in their madness. If you compare the Australian economy today with what it was under John Howard, that is a bad comparison, because people saw Howard as progressive and the economy as booming. They look at Labor and they see $157 billion in net debt and $250 billion in gross debt. This is following the Howard government, when we had $80 billion—not debt but credit. We had $80 billion in the bank, and the Labor Party have turned that into $157 billion in debt—or something like that. That was probably last week's figure and it is S165 billion today, because they borrow $100 million every day. The taxpayers, people listening to this broadcast, will one day have to repay that debt. Until it is repaid, the people listening to this broadcast, the taxpayers, will have to pay foreign lenders $20 million every day in interest to fund this government's incompetent financial management.

Again, I divert myself. This bill, which deserves full consideration, links the Australian economy with what is almost a basket case economy, that of Europe. It links the cost of carbon with that of Europe. What is the latest price of carbon in Europe? Is it the European equivalent of $5 a tonne? You can buy it for next to nothing—get it in a raffle—it is that cheap in Europe. How is that? I want someone to tell me that. This is what the Senate should be investigating: whether this bill was properly scrutinised in this chamber. This motion is trying to prevent that. I ask the Labor Party how $5 a tonne for carbon emissions is going to get anyone to stop their emissions. I have mentioned how China is quadrupling its use of carbon. To offset that you can just buy a permit—not that the Chinese bother about permits. I am in no way criticising China. I understand it is a developing country getting a better life for its citizens by reducing their cost of living. If someone in Australia, America or Europe wants to buy some permit, they pay a few dollars for a permit and they can emit what they like. How is that going to help?

These are the sorts of questions that need to be fully explored. We need to have the ministers trying to answer these questions. I would love to put those questions to the ministers and watch how the Labor Party squirm in trying to answer the obvious, which they will not be able to do. But I am not going to get that opportunity, because we will be guillotined. We will not have a committee stage of the bill and we will not be able to put these very relevant questions.

The Labor Party suggest in all of their modelling that the price per tonne of carbon emissions in Australia is going to increase from the current $23 to $29 a tonne and then to $39 a tonne. They say that by 2052 the price will increase to the equivalent of today's$305 a tonne. Europe will still be giving away permits at a couple of dollars a pop—or you will be able to take a raffle ticket and get a few permits as a prize. This is what the Labor government are trying to associate us with. This is the sort of legislation that demands to be fully exposed. It demands a proper committee inquiry, and I understand we are going to have a committee inquiry. I am being told that the committee inquiry will be all over in five days. That is how long it will take to put out the ads, get people to think about it and write their submissions, and then make their travel arrangements to come in and speak to the committee if the committee has an opportunity to question people—all this is to be done in five or six days.

Then, when the committee reports, this chamber should sit until some of these very simple and obvious questions are answered. But are they going to be? It will be guillotined through in the last three days of this Senate sitting.

That is why people out there have stopped listening to the Prime Minister and the current government. That is why, as in Queensland, they are just waiting for the election. Forget the opinion polls—they go up and down, as they did in Queensland. What happened? There were fewer people who took a how-to-vote card in the Queensland election than I have ever seen in my more than 40 years handing out how-to-vote cards. Why? They had made up their minds six months ago. It did not matter what happened in the campaign, it did not matter what how-to-vote card they got: they went to the polls and they knew what they were doing. The results speak for themselves. And the same is happening Australia wide. It is because this government is so incompetent, so undemocratic, that it shoves through this sort of bill—with the support, I might say, of the Greens political party—and stops this chamber fully investigating these bits of legislation. That is why the coalition will be opposing this.