Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. We passed the legislation for carbon pricing for making the polluters pay. There was a compensation program worked out and delivered. This is a working strategy, it is a working framework of legislation, and it gives certainty. I want to say to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia and the like: you are not going to get certainty with direct action because how can you have certainty with a policy that supposedly only goes to 2020—a grants scheme to 2020? Let me tell you: if you succeed in repealing this package it will be back again—only next time that the market mechanism will be back again the cap will have to be so much more severe. The dislocation in the economy will be huge because you failed to act early and appropriately, and the longer you leave it the more expensive and the more dislocating it is going to be. To the likes of Peter Anderson and others, and BHP, who are now trying to weasel out of actually paying a price on pollution, let me tell you: when the market mechanisms return, in the event this was ever repealed, it will be a more severe regime. You have got certainty right now. You have certainty with this legislation, you have a price curb, and that is what you need to be considering.

The reason the Greens will not be supporting an inquiry into the current legislation is that we do not want to avoid a vote on this. It is time to take it straight up to the coalition government. It is time to say: this legislation is working. We are not going to cast doubt; there is going to be no equivocation on this. If the coalition says they want to tear down the only thing that is working to bring down greenhouse gas emissions, we are going to say: no, on the contrary, you are not. We are going to protect the Climate Change Authority. We are going to protect the legislation we have and we are not going to stand by and let you vandalise action on climate change at a time when the globe is considering how to actually respond to this global challenge. That is why we want the action on Direct Action now. We will focus on that over the summer with no equivocation and take it straight up to the Abbott government, saying, 'No, you bring it on. We will not stand by and have it repealed. We are going to stand by the thing that is working and we are going to send that message to Warsaw, to every government there, that the Australian Senate will not stand by and watch you tear down an effective market mechanism which the world recognises is working.'