Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Okay, leadership; thank you, Senator Whish-Wilson. I hope you are speaking after me, because you will be able to elaborate on how Australia's leadership will lead the world. I am a great Australian. I would say anywhere that we are the best country in the world. There is no doubt about that. But, regrettably, Senator Whish-Wilson, very few other countries have the same sort of regard for Australia that you and I have. I am sorry, Senator Whish-Wilson, but the fact that we reduce our emissions by five per cent of 1.4 per cent hardly rated an eye flick in China; it did not rate an eye flick in most of the United States. And the Europeans just laughed at us, wondering why a country such as Australia, which was a real competitor with parts of Europe, was pricing itself out of every market for, according to Senator Whish-Wilson, 'leadership,' which nobody else was going to follow.

Senator Whish-Wilson, if you are right, and it was a case of leadership, what happened to our leadership? How many other countries seriously did anything? You will get up and quote some dodgy figures about some state in America putting on a two per cent tax or something and claim that that is what is happening. You will tell me that China is doing something in a very small way. What you will not tell me is that China sets up a new coal fired power station every week and that is just part of it.

Yet Senator Whish-Wilson is part of the group that supported the Labor government in introducing the world's biggest carbon tax, a carbon tax that has cost the jobs of my fellow Australians for no appreciable gain to the environment. I ask Senator Wilson and anyone in the Labor Party—I have asked this question, conservatively, 100 times before and no-one has yet answered me—to tell me what happens when Australia reduces its carbon emissions by five per cent of 1.4 per cent? Tell me how that will make any difference whatsoever to the changing climate of the world? I will wait, as I have waited for about four years, for anyone to answer that question seriously. And I look forward to Senator Whish-Wilson telling me how Australia having the biggest carbon tax in the world in order to reduce our emissions by five per cent of 1.4 per cent is good policy. That is why the majority of Australians at the last election rejected the Labor-Greens approach to carbon tax and voted in a government that would seriously look at these things—an adult government that really understands the economy and the environment.

Debate interrupted.