Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too joined the thousands and thousands of Australians who met and marched yesterday, demanding action on climate change. I marched here in Canberra. If you need clear proof that it does not matter who leads the Liberal Party, just look at the climate change policies: they are exactly the same. Despite a change in Prime Minister, the policy is written by the climate change sceptics, the parliamentary members of the Liberal Party—many of whom, I am sure, make up the 44 who did not vote for Mr Turnbull to be our Prime Minister.

It is not that Mr Turnbull, our Prime Minister, believes that climate change is 'crap', to quote the former Prime Minister. He does not. In fact, he is on the public record as saying quite the opposite, as recently as a few years ago:

The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is crap and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing.

He went on—I will not say it here, because I am sure it is unparliamentary language. But he described it as something beginning with 'bull' and said that not only was it that, but that Mr Abbott knew it to be that as well.

Despite not being one of the Liberal Party's climate sceptics, Mr Turnbull will do nothing about climate change because he knows he will lose the prime ministership. He lost the leadership of the Liberal Party once before because he stood up for climate change, so he already knows what the outcome will be if he airs his real views and beliefs that climate change is real.

We now know that three-quarters of Australians, according to the CSIRO research, believe in climate change—which is, funnily enough, about the same who believe in and support marriage equality. And, although Mr Turnbull says he supports climate change and believes it is real, and that he certainly supports marriage equality, he is going to do nothing about either. Why? Because he wants to be Prime Minister more than he wants to do what the Australian people want, whether it is about climate change or marriage equality.

The farce which Mr Turnbull used to describe the Liberals'—his own—climate change policy is really a farce being perpetrated on the Australian public, led by Mr Turnbull and his government. The Climate Institute's research states, 'The majority of Australians don't believe this government'—the Turnbull government—'is doing enough on climate change.' And the number of Australians who think that the Turnbull government is not doing enough on climate change is increasing.

Rather than thinking that coal is good for humanity, as the Turnbull government thinks, almost three-quarters of Australians believe it is inevitable that coal-fired generators will need to be replaced with clean energy. Sixty-five per cent of Australians do not believe in divesting wind power and solar power, yet what has the Turnbull government done? They have appointed a very expensive wind power commissioner who is paid $205,000 for a part-time three-year position. Again, why? It is a sop to the party's own climate sceptics and a sop to those crossbenchers who also do not believe in climate change. Mr Hunt has gone on to tell us that that will be within budget, yet the new wind commissioner is telling us that he is going to make outside appointments. I think we now need to know what is being cut to accommodate the climate sceptics within the Liberals' own party. And once again Mr Turnbull just backs in those old views.

Today, we saw that the Nationals—the great Nationals; the tail wagging the dog—in exchange for their support of Mr Turnbull, have taken another backwards step. First, Mr Turnbull put them in charge of water. He put them in charge of water!

And, today, they have urged the Prime Minister not to sign up to a communique at the UN climate summit in Paris, pushing nations to speed up the removal of subsidies on fossil fuels. Why? It could jeopardise the future of the diesel fuel rebate. The Nationals seem to have completely ignored the impact that fossil fuels have on climate change. Even the IMF have said that fossil fuel prices should reflect not only supply costs but also environmental impacts like climate change and the health costs of local air pollution. The IMF did not stop there; they went on to say that fossil fuel subsidies are also socially regressive.

Those climate sceptic Nationals discussed it at their caucus this morning and have sent a direct message, or was it a warning, to Mr Turnbull. The biggest joke of all came from Senator Canavan, who said, 'We'—the Nationals—'don't view the fuel rebate as a subsidy.' So what is it? Is it an entitlement?

Let us see what Mr Turnbull will do to head off this latest backlash from his own coalition. Certainly, they have been tweeting about it, and Mr Christensen took to Twitter saying that if we signed the fossil fuel subsidy, it would be madness. And, then, guess what? Mr Turnbull assured that noisy rump of the Nationals that all would be okay and that nothing that threatened the rebate would be done. Again, the tail is wagging the dog. Mr Turnbull knows who he has to appease in his party and it is, again, the right-wing Tea Party elements, the climate sceptics in this case. It is clear that there are two very different futures for Australia: Labor and renewable energy versus the same old Liberals and coal.

More research conducted for Future Super shows that 84 per cent of Australians think there should be more than 40 per cent of renewable energy in Australia. The Prime Minister is not interested in what the Australian people think. Mr Turnbull is only interested in the dirty deals with the dominant right of his party to serve his political ambitions. Despite them sending that wrecking ball across the renewable energy industry, their emissions reduction fund is a joke. But they will cling to this notion that somehow, with clever accounting, they are doing the right thing.

Was Senator Reynolds really saying in here that the thousands and thousands of Australians who marched over the weekend have got it wrong on climate change and the climate sceptics in their party have got it right? I do not think she is right. History will show we are right.