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

What an ideological rant from Senator Brandis. He started with a totally hypocritical statement claiming that the previous speech, by Senator Wong, was about politics, not about the true merits of the issue, and then he spent his entire time engaged in an ideological rant against the unions and an attempt to frame people's contributions in the Senate as being somehow governed by particular jobs that they may have held previously. What an appalling state of affairs.

We will not be supporting a suspension of standing orders because, apart from anything else, the Prime Minister has spent the entire summer running around the country telling Australia that the government's first item of business in parliament would be to get rid of carbon pricing. That is what they were going to do. Nothing was going to stand in their way—nothing, until they hit upon a political scam that they decided to go after in an attempt to demonise the union movement in Australia. That is exactly what has gone on here.

There is one emergency in this country about which I would like to inform Senator Abetz—the climate emergency. In case he has not noticed, there are bushfires burning across Victoria. Heatwaves, extreme weather events, have claimed many lives this summer. In fact, in Victoria, there has been double the death toll than there would have been in normal circumstances. People right around the world are struggling in the face of these extreme weather events and yet the government wants to tear down the only policy framework we have in place that is starting to address the climate emergency, by bringing down emissions in the electricity sector.

Are we to believe from this that the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, has spent the entire summer telling Australia something that is not true? What they have worked out is that the Australian community has got to the point where it no longer trusts the government on the issue of climate and now we are witnessing an attempt to distract the community from the realities of what is happening in the physical world out there in local Australian communities. People are really worried about having to deal with the ongoing impacts of heatwaves and fires. They are disturbed when they hear, as we heard on the radio today, about extreme weather in the United Kingdom and the possibility of the Thames bursting its banks. Right across the planet, people are worrying about the impacts of climate change. The Prime Minister said that his first job was going to be to humiliate the nation by tearing down the clean energy package—that was what he was going to do. The politics are now such that he has decided that such a course of action would not serve his political interests, because what he wants to do is frame his government as one which will tear down yet something else. The only thing that he is good at is tearing things down, not building things up—not creating infrastructure for the future; just tearing down what we have.

The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee inquiry into the re-establishment of the ABCC is really important. It is important because it will expose the fact that the ABCC will have some of the most draconian and coercive powers ever seen in Australia. These building and construction industry laws take away the right to silence; they deny people their choice of lawyer; they provide powers to compel evidence, with the threat of jail if witnesses do not comply; and they impose severe restrictions on the rights of workers to organise and bargain collectively. These measures were undemocratic and discriminatory at the time they were brought in, and they should never be reinstated. I am keen to see as much evidence as possible go before that Senate committee and am prepared for it to take as long as it takes.

The Greens have consistently campaigned against ABCC establishment laws and for their abolition, and the reinstatement of the ABCC would be a return to the most extreme and draconian elements of former Prime Minister John Howard's Work Choices. It is an anti-union ideology and it is an underhand attack on wages and conditions. We are not going to support a naked political agenda, and we want to put a consistent message to the government today—and that message is Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, has run away from his promise to the nation in relation to climate.