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

It is coming out of the pockets of big polluters; that is where the money is coming from. That is my point. It is coming out of the pockets of big polluters because the big polluters are being asked to internalise the real cost of their pollution, and that is why we are saying: why should the community have to pay with their lives?

Why should the community have to pay for the extreme weather events? Who pays for the massive destruction of infrastructure? Who paid for the aftermath of the Queensland floods? I will tell you: the community did, through their taxes. Billions went in that so-called one-off flood repair levy. But we said at the time that a permanent fund should be set up and the big polluters should pay into that permanent fund, because every year Australians have to pay for extreme fires, for floods and for drought relief, and that is going to go on and on. We are going to see more extreme weather events, and the community is going to pay with lives and with infrastructure, and they are already paying. If you look at the so-called savings that you are supposedly going to be making, and then you take from that the cost of cleaning up after these extreme weather events, and ask people: 'How much are your insurance premiums these days if you live in an area vulnerable to flooding, to storm surge or to fire?' you will find that, if you live in Roma, the savings that you supposedly are going to make from the repeal of a carbon price are nothing compared with the fact that you cannot even afford insurance anymore because of your vulnerability to flooding. That is the reality around Australia, and that is why I think we need to stand here and go through these bills and have people actually understand the connections between all of the elements of these pieces of legislation. The future depends upon it.

We went out and spoke with some young people this morning, and I can tell you that they are representative of young people right around the country. They get the climate science. They know the world is changing. They also know that it is their future, that they and their children are going to inherit an earth that has been seriously depleted by species extinction, for a start, and extreme weather events. They know they are going to inherit a world with more conflict. The Pentagon has already acknowledged that global warming is going to be a major driver of conflict and is now part of military planning in the United States. That is why we are saying: do not rush this. Australia is not a dictatorship; it is a democracy, and the Senate is a house of review. We should be reviewing this legislation and pointing out the lies that have been told about carbon pricing. It has always been a lie to say that we have a carbon tax in Australia. We have an emissions trading scheme that is legislated; it is in place now and it is linked to the European Union. And we should be keeping that carbon price.

Senator Lambie interjecting—

I am pleased that Senator Lambie has raised the issue of pensioners. Part of the design of carbon pricing was that people on low incomes and pensions were overcompensated for the flow-on cost of carbon pricing. We structured the compensation to overcompensate people on low incomes. What is more, we did something that was innovative, and that was raise the tax-free threshold. The tax-free threshold in Australia used to be $6,000. We have raised the tax-free threshold to $18,000 and it will go to $19,400. That means people around Australia on low incomes benefit hugely. Everybody, and particularly those on low incomes—part-time workers, students and the like—benefits from the fact that they have now got a higher tax-free threshold. That was part of the design.

It is important that we have a full and informed debate on how the package worked. Why did we need $10 billion going into renewable energy, which the Greens negotiated? It was because the carbon price was not going to drive the transformation to 100 per cent renewables as quickly as possible. That is why we added the Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to the architecture to support a transition to a low-carbon economy. The Climate Change Authority was an important part of the architecture. It was based on what they do in the UK, where they recognised that they needed an expert body to recommend to the parliament the level of ambition that would be required to meet their obligations as part of a global community trying to constrain global warming to less than two degrees.

The Greens will stand here and argue absolutely for the retention of our emissions trading scheme and the retention of action on global warming. Frankly, it is a global disgrace that we are behaving as an isolationist, inward-looking, selfish country in the global community. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, is calling a global summit asking countries to put a higher level of ambition on the table and acknowledging the disaster that is climate change. And this weekend we had scientists reporting that we are very close to having a massive burst of methane going into the atmosphere because of the thawing in the Arctic. That will set us back a very long time in terms of urgency and what needs to be done.

By keeping the scheme we have got, we have a trajectory which we can increase and we will be able to do it in a way that does not have massive dislocation in the economy. But the longer you leave action on global warming, the longer you do not do what is necessary, by the time you get around to doing it the trajectory will be so steep that the dislocation will be huge. We have already seen the risk associated with investment in what will be stranded assets. I have absolutely no doubt that the coal ports up and down the Queensland coast and the coalmines currently being proposed in the Galilee and Bowen basins are going to end up as stranded assets because the world is going to have to move and very fast.

It beggars belief that the Parliament of Australia, a nation which prides itself on its global responsibility, would abuse the processes of the parliament and race in here on the first day of a new Senate and try and drive through legislation that will impact on every person who comes after us. This seems to be part of a game the coalition wants to play. The Prime Minister ran around Australia saying Whyalla would be wiped off the map, and Barnaby Joyce said a roast dinner would cost $100 and the like. All of it was untrue—unsubstantiated nonsense has been out there. That is why we need to make a considered and thoughtful judgement. It really will be a situation where, in 50 years time, people will look back at who was in here now and ask themselves: 'Why did those people vote the way that they did in full knowledge? Were they so selfish that they didn't care about future generations? Were they so ignorant that they didn't read the science and understand what it meant? Or were they just involved in playing cheap political games?' People in here have to recognise that on this package of bills, on this issue, they will be judged. We will all be judged for the positions that we take.

Former Prime Minister Rudd decided in 2010 to abandon what he then called 'the greatest moral challenge of all time'. And it is. It is an intergenerational equity issue and it is a justice issue. He was right. In abandoning that in 2010, he turned the 2010 election into a climate election. I can tell you, Mr President, the 2016 federal election will be a climate election in Australia. That is because the rest of the world is not going to tolerate what Australia is doing. We will see not only the Chinese but also the British and the Americans entering into all kinds of bilaterals, which will give them enormous economic advantage, recognising that the main source of growth at the moment is innovation in the clean energy economy. Australia will be left behind as a rust-bucket economy because we are looking back to an old, resource based dirty past as the rest of the world is investing its best brains in a clever, innovative and educated future. That is why this choice today is about the past versus the future and that is why the Greens are firmly placed here on the side of the future.

We accept the Climate Change Authority's recommendation that we need a 40 to 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The community is rapidly coming to understand the costs of not acting on climate change. The cost of acting is far less and people are now seeing that this is an equity issue. Why should $18 billion be kept in the hands of the polluters and taken out of the pockets of the community? That is what people are asking and that is the question that has to be answered. But it is because of the fact that so many lies have been told, because there is an attempt to abuse the processes of this parliament, that we are saying here that we will absolutely not support these bills being taken together. We ask that the questions of proceeding without formality and the bills being taken together be put as separate questions.