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

Perhaps I should relate the facts. Here is a leader of the Labor Party who promised hand on heart that there would be no carbon tax under a government that she led and then the first bit of legislation is a carbon tax. If she had not made that promise on the eve of the election, she knows as I know that she would never have been elected. In fact, the Labor Party would have been annihilated. We hear all the comments about how important global warming is, how importance it is that Australia does something and how necessary the carbon tax is. To Senator Conroy, if it is so necessary why did you promise before the last election not to bring it in? I would love to hear an answer to that, even by way of interjection.

Mr Shorten is the architect of this bill, and Senator Thistlethwaite said he has done a great job on it. I only have a few minutes more to speak, unfortunately, but I could spend 20 minutes and then another 20 minutes saying how good Senator Mathias Cormann is. He is in the chamber, sitting at the end of the bench. He was the one who turned this awful piece of legislation into something that is mildly okay. I give credit thanks to Senator Cormann here.

This legislation was amended yesterday. I have a report here from all the Labor Party people, including Senator Thistlethwaite, who said the bill was great as it was. Were there any Greens on that committee? I am told there were. Senator Ludlam, I do not know who it was, but they said that the bill as it stood was a great bill and should be passed. Yet, just yesterday, Mr Shorten accepted Senator Cormann's amendment, the amendment in the coalition's dissenting report that the minister had been alerted to seven months ago.