Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

As we sit in the parliament today, diplomats from around the world are themselves sitting in the United Nations annual climate change conference—give or take a couple of hours for the time difference. The conference this year is held in the Polish city of Katowice, a city whose industrial roots lay in mining coal. The conference halls where the discussions take place are heated by coal-fired power plants. It's a neat metaphor for the very broad problem we're struggling with across the globe.

This year's conference in Katowice is an extension of the process that began in Kyoto, passed through Copenhagen and then passed through Paris. It is our attempt as a global community to use the international rules based order to create a system that can reduce carbon emissions in a way that is fair and in a way that is economical for nations all around the world. That attempt, however, does butt up against the ongoing legacy of carbon-intensive industrialisation—a legacy that is still visible and ongoing in Katowice, Poland, as indeed it is in many nations around the world, including our own.

How we navigate these two immovable facts is the problem at the heart of climate policy, and it is a challenge that Australia is failing to meet under this government. That is in no small part due to the actions of the party that put forward this urgency motion for debate, the Australian Greens. We heard in question time today the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Cormann, congratulate and thank the Greens political party for voting against the CPRS put forward by the Rudd government. I can see why he would want to thank them, because that vote by the Greens—some of whom are still here with us in the chamber today—set off the climate wars that have consumed Australian politics for over a decade. It is time for the Greens to grapple with the consequences of what they have done. I have never seen any contrition nor any admission of the mistakes that have led us to this point. Their vote undid the best chance Australia had to legislate an enduring and effective policy response to climate change. I have never heard the word 'sorry' from anyone up that end of the chamber. And the consequences of that decision are stark.