George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I am not familiar with Mr Warren; I note what he says. But I think that anybody who follows Australian politics, particularly in the last few months, would be aware that we have had much public discussion about the need to put an end to what some people have described as the 'climate wars'—because over the last decade or more, most of which, I might say, was during the period of the Rudd and Gillard governments and during a period much of which Senator Wong was the minister for the environment and climate change, we have had a policy deadlock in this country. And we have seen the consequences of that policy deadlock play out on the floor of this very chamber. Senator O'Neill, what the Australian people want and what the Turnbull government is committed to doing is to put the climate wars behind us, to try and come up with a series of proposals which will be acceptable to this parliament and which will meet the three objectives of electricity affordability, reliability of supply and maintaining our international obligations. So, Senator O'Neill, I would not be going into the history of last decade, if I were you, for most of which, of course, your side of politics was in government.

Rather, Mr Turnbull, who has a deep understanding and great intellectual interest in this area, has now taken the leadership to put this period of policy failure behind us. That is why we commissioned the Finkel review, that is why we are considering the Finkel review and that is why shortly the government will be bringing forward proposals informed by the Finkel review.