Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the repeal of the clean energy bills. I do this for a number of reasons, but for the life of me I cannot accept a proposition based on a scare campaign run by the coalition, who are now in government—a scare campaign where we take short-term approaches and do not look at the long-term challenges for this country. I will quote someone I do not normally quote, although I have used this quote before; it is by the founder of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert Menzies. In a radio broadcast on 24 July 1942, Sir Robert Menzies had this to say of his Liberal creed:

Nothing could be worse for democracy than to adopt the practice of permitting knowledge to be overthrown by ignorance.

If there has ever been an example of knowledge being overthrown by ignorance, the debate on climate change is ignorance overthrowing knowledge. He went on to say:

If I have honestly and thoughtfully arrived at a certain conclusion on a public question and my electors disagree with me, my first duty is to endeavour to persuade them that my view is right.

I will come to what the current Prime Minister's view was in relation to climate change. I will come to his view on how you best deal with climate change. But let me say that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is certainly not taking the advice of Sir Robert Menzies on how you deal with an issue you believe in. Robert Menzies continued:

If I fail in this, my second duty will be to accept the electoral consequences and not to run away from them. Fear can never be a proper or useful ingredient in those mutual relations of respect and good-will which ought to exist between the elector and the elected.

I honestly think that what has happened with the coalition is that fear has been used continually by them in relation to climate change. For short-term political gain, they have used fear as a weapon to try to destroy the scientific base of this issue and to destroy an unarguable environmental case. That is not what the creed of the Liberal Party was and it is certainly not what Sir Robert Menzies was arguing in those days. He went on:

And so, as we think about it we shall find more and more how disfiguring a thing fear is in our own political and social life.

It has not bothered those on the other side that this creed of rejecting fear as a political weapon is the creed that was put forward by Sir Robert Menzies. They have used it mercilessly in pursuit of short-term political gain at the expense of long-term management of what is one of the biggest social, economic and moral issues this country has ever faced.

Menzies went on to say:

Men fear the unknown as children fear the dark. It is that kind of fear which too often restrains experiment and keeps us from innovations which might benefit us enormously.

What could be clearer in terms of benefit than putting a price on carbon to make sure that future generations get a fair go from this generation? What could be clearer? The experiment that was proposed—putting a price on carbon—has just been rejected. It is not so much an experiment—I think it is clear that the majority of environmental scientists and the majority of economists say that that is the way to go.

Sir Robert Menzies said:

It is the fear of knowledge which prevents so many of us from really using our minds, and which makes so many of us ready slaves to cheap and silly slogans and catch-cries.

Doesn't that say it all? Cheap and silly slogans and catchcries in place of critical analysis of the problem, scientific understanding of the problem and environmental understanding of the consequences of global warming.

He said:

It is the fear of life and its problems which makes so many of us yearn for nothing so much as some safe billet from which risk and its twin brother enterprise are alike abolished.

So Sir Robert Menzies, not one of my pin-up boys in politics, really had nailed this position. I suppose if Sir Robert Menzies were around now he would be looking at the cheap and silly slogans and the catchcries from the opposition and shake his head and wonder where his party has gone. I can tell where the party has gone. The party has really gone to the bottom, where it is short-termism over the long term.

My view is that these bills before us now are the triumph of the barbarians in the Liberal Party over those who would want to hold onto that political heritage. The barbarians in the party have rejected the political heritage of Sir Robert Menzies. You just have to look at the Prime Minister's position. As he told Malcolm Turnbull, he is a weathervane on climate change. He will just stick his hand up, see which way the wind is blowing and then take a position. On 18 December 2008 he supported an ETS:

An emissions trading scheme probably is the best way to put a price on carbon …

But seven months later he was supporting a carbon tax. On 10 July he said:

I suspect that a straight carbon tax or charge could be more transparent and easier to change if conditions change or our understanding of the science changes.

Two weeks later, he was back supporting an ETS. He said:

There is much to be said for an emissions trading scheme. It was, after all, the mechanism for emission reduction ultimately chosen by the Howard government. It enables an increasing market price to be set for carbon through capping volumes of emissions.

Then in December 2010 he was against both an ETS and a carbon tax. Something was in the wind. Maybe it was the leadership of the Liberal Party. One minute he was supporting a carbon tax, one minute he was supporting a carbon price, and then in December 2010 he was saying, 'One of the reasons the coalition is so much against carbon taxes and emission trading schemes is that they are not going to help the environment, but, by gee, there'll be a huge whack on everyone's cost of living.' Well, wasn't Sir Menzies right? Here comes the fear campaign. That was the fear campaign starting on behalf of the coalition.

On the same day in July 2009 when he indicated support for an ETS, he said he was unconvinced by climate science. He said:

I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have significantly increased since the spread of industrialisation, but it seems that noticeable warming has only taken place between the 1970s and 1990s.

Anyone who has had even a very shallow look at the scientific facts would know that that is a political position, not one based on science.

Six months later, suddenly humans do cause climate change. On the ABC Radio 702, he said, 'I think human activity certainly does impact on climate.' A year later he said human activity is still contributing: 'I think climate change is real' and 'humanity makes a contribution to it'. But a week later, on 14 March, he is back to being unsure about climate science. He said:

I don't think we can say that the science is settled here.

There is no doubt that we should do our best to rest lightly on the planet and there is no doubt that we should do our best to emit as few waste products as possible, but, having said that, whether carbon dioxide is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out … is not yet proven.

That is just a nonsense. That is a political argument. It is not based on the science that is before this parliament.

Mr Abbott simply cannot be believed on his climate change policy—and calling Direct Action a policy is probably overstating it. The truth is that many on the Liberal side do not believe in the science. They are antiscience, and Mr Abbott just does not have the courage to tell the public what he really thinks, so he jumps from one position to another continually.

Let's deal with the science. We have heard contributions from coalition senators here over a period of time trying to say, 'I actually believe in the science, but we're not really sure that it is anthropocentric—

Senator Bernardi interjecting—

Senator, that is human caused carbon pollution, and that is what he needs to understand. What do key scientists at the CSIRO say? They say:

Climate change is the greatest ecological, economic, and social challenge of our time.

Those are the people who we pay to provide us with scientific knowledge on the issues confronting Australia. The scientists at the CSIRO have an international reputation. I heard one Liberal senator here saying that the people who are supporting climate change in the scientific community are low-level scientists. You cannot say that about the CSIRO. You cannot say that about the Bureau of Meteorology. You cannot say that about the Australian scientists who are involved in this. They are amongst the best in the world and that is why the world listens to them when they talk on these issues. The only people who are not listening to our scientists are the coalition—the climate sceptics and the climate deniers on the other side.

The Australian Academy of Science has said that this is an issue that has to be dealt with and that we need to deal with it quickly. Global sea levels are currently rising. There is a great deal of evidence that the earth's climate has warmed. Global average temperatures have risen in line with the climate model projections. The models have been done—some of the most sophisticated computer modelling ever in the world—and they are clearly indicating that temperatures are rising. What is happening in practice around the world is consistent with those climate model projections.

So climate change is already visible. That is the message. Southern and eastern Australia's water supply reliability is expected to decline. It is the CSIRO saying this. It is not some politician standing here saying that this is what is going to happen; it is our scientific community—the experts in the science of climate change. They say 'development and population growth in Australia’s coastal regions will exacerbate risks from sea-level rise' and that there will be 'significant loss of unique Australian animal and plant species' across the country. They say there is a risk to infrastructure, including the failure of urban drainage and sewerage systems, and that more blackouts, transport disruption and greater building damage will all have to be dealt with.

These are not scare campaigns as they are dressed up by the tactics group of the coalition; this is what the scientists are telling us about climate change. I want my grandkids to have the same rights and privileges I had. That is the right to have a country where we are not facing these calamitous environmental issues.

The scientists go on to say that:

Heatwaves, storms and floods are likely to have a direct impact on the health of Australians … Moderate warming in the absence of rainfall declines can be beneficial to some agricultural crops … However, these positive effects can be offset by changes in temperature, rainfall, pests, and the availability of nutrients. Production from cropping and livestock is projected to decline over much of southern Australia, as is the quality of grain, grape, vegetable, fruit, and other crops.

What I just cannot believe is when the National Party in this place, the people who should be warning their constituencies about the effects of climate change, deny that it is happening and go out and perpetrate the lies and nonsense that we have seen in the political debate in this country. I cannot understand why, if you are depending on the land, you would not accept the science. But that seems to be what is happening.

The other argument we hear is that it is all going to send industry broke. There is a document called Cleaning up: Australia's readiness for a low-carbon future. This was done in 2012. It was not done by the Greens. It was not done by the Labor Party. It was done by the Economist Intelligence Unit ofThe Economistthe bible for the economic dries around the world. It did a case study on Wesfarmers. Wesfarmers, it said:

… will be among the companies most heavily affected by the new carbon price scheme.

Aside from power stations, Wesfarmers is Australia's sixth biggest carbon emitter, producing 2.7m tonnes of direct emissions.

It was incurring:

… a A$100m net annual cost in the first year of the scheme as a result of the initial carbon price of A$23 per tonne.

But its revenue in 2011 was $56 billion. So it had a revenue of $56 billion, and the cost to deal with carbon was $100 million a year. What did Wesfarmers say? It said:

… it can maintain its margins by taking steps to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.

…   …   …

Apart from the investment to improve energy efficiency, much of the group's focus in the last year has been on intensive emissions reduction, particularly in the chemicals business.

The document went on to say that Wesfarmers is:

… developing internal policies to guide employees as they prepare greenhouse and energy reports and deal with customers and suppliers on issues to do with carbon pricing—

and that is an important aspect of that company's work.

It went on to say:

Though the carbon cost is significant, Wesfarmers believes it can mitigate it to a large extent with top line growth and increased organisational efficiency.

This is a company that has one of the highest carbon prices that has to be paid, a company that is a big employer, a company that has taken the steps to deal with the issue of carbon pricing—and it says it will not affect its bottom line because it is going to deal with it.

Who was the sponsor of this report? It was General Electric. General Electric sponsored this report for The Economist. There is another case study in here on Shell. Shell said a cap-and-trade system is the right way to go and that it is 'the right mix at the right time'. So no-one agrees with this nonsense of Direct Action that the coalition are putting up. The Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, clearly does not like it. He belled the cat when he said it was a nonsense and a short-term approach. We have to take long-term approaches in the interests of our grandkids and in the interests of the planet. That is the challenge the coalition are failing to meet.