Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will make a little contribution on this motion here this evening. I don't have too much of an issue with the first part of the motion, which seeks to congratulate President-elect Biden on his victory. I think seeing a democratic election of a leader from whichever party is always a celebration of the free principles that we live by here in this country, and we hope other people around the world can similarly have rights to choose their own leaders. I celebrate that, for sure. It is strange, though, that the second part of the motion is almost seeking to undermine those very principles of democracy.

This motion seems to indicate that, because of the result of an election in the United States, we should change our own policies here. It seems to indicate that, because there was an election in the US last week involving, I think, something like 140 million to 150 million Americans who voted in the end, that should determine the policies of our nation. I've got a sort of quaint view that the policies that are decided in this country should be dictated by the free people of this country, expressing their views through a democratic process in our country—not in other countries. Those countries are free, and they have every right to elect the leaders that they choose, to adopt and implement policies as they see fit, but I firmly defend the right of Australians to decide what should happen in Australia. The latter part of this motion seeks to undermine what I thought would be a pretty standard and well-regarded principle across the chamber in this place, but we see people who otherwise support democracy—they say that they're against fascism and that they support democracy—wanting to see the Australian people bound in chains by the votes of those from overseas. Those two views are a little inconsistent and expose the lack of sincerity of those seeking to say that they support democracy when they're actually seeking to get their way. That's what they want; they want to get their way.

There are, of course, allegations in the United States of fraud occurring in this election last week. There are allegations of people from different states voting in other states and there are even allegations of dead people voting, but I haven't seen a single allegation that—maybe I've missed something—an Australian got to vote in the US election. Did that happen? Did any Australians get to vote in the US election? I don't think anybody has made that allegation yet; I don't think that's being litigated in the United States. Maybe I'd change my view on this if there were actually some kind of voice from Australians, but I don't think, despite the Greens attempt, we are going to be the 51st state of the United States. The Greens here seem want us to be part of the US. They want us to sign up and tie ourselves to the US and somehow become the 51st state of the union. I don't want to do that to Australia. I love America. We've got a great relationship with the United States, but we are a free, proud, independent nation here and should cherish and protect that.

No-one from the other side has mentioned that—they might have missed it; I've only seen some contributions from the other side—we had an election here last year. It wasn't that long ago that we had our own election in which all Australians got to vote and have their say on a range of issues, including the one that's dominating this debate: climate change. In fact, I went and had a look this afternoon. The Guardian website declared before last year's federal election that it was, in fact, a climate-change election—that the whole election was about climate change. The then Leader of the Labor Party, Bill Shorten, made it his final pitch a couple of days before the election, saying he wanted to send a message to the world on climate change. He made that policy a central part of his pitch. Labor took to the election a policy of cutting Australian carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2030. That was a central part of their policy platform. Australians had their say last year and the Labor Party lost. They lost the election—they lost the climate-change election. Australians did not sign up to impose unilateral, radical cuts on our carbon emissions that would cost jobs here and do nothing to lower the temperature of the globe. They were not the policies that the Australian people supported at last year's election. They re-elected a government that, yes, through the agreements we have made, did seek to have a plan to cut our emissions, but to do so in a way that was consistent with other countries around the world, or at least with what other countries have said—I'll come to that. They elected a government that wanted to see the growth of great industries in this country, like coalmining. They wanted to see the Adani coalmine get going. It's up and running now. Over 1,500 people are now employed at that mine, thanks to the re-election of the Liberal-National government here in Australia.

That is what should happen in a democracy. The Liberal-National government gets to implement the policies that it took to the election, and policies of cutting carbon emissions by more than what we agreed with other countries were rejected. This motion seems seeks to overturn the will of the Australian people expressed just 18 months ago and impose a different set of policies because of an election in the US. What an absurdity.

I'll also just briefly touch on the fact that this motion glosses over the fact that there were many elections in the US last week. Many elections occurred in the United States, one of which, of course—the presidential election—has the most focus. But at every US election there is also an election for the House of Representatives and an election for the Senate—or at least a third of the Senate every two years. In those elections, the policies of the Democratic Party—I'm not seeking to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party in the US, but others are here in this chamber—purportedly saying that somehow they wanted to radically cut carbon emissions were all rejected. The Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives. They did not take over control of the Senate. So it's unclear that the United States will take any further action, from a legislative perspective, on climate change now, because their chambers, the ones elected by their own people, have not significantly changed from before the election.

That's just a small point though. The bigger point here is: what should we do? The bigger point is we should look to base our actions on what other countries do, not what they say. Too much of this debate is focused far too heavily on what other countries are saying. Whether it's the President-elect of the United States, whether it's the Chinese government, whether it's European governments or whether it's the re-elected New Zealand government, there's always this focus. Someone's come out and said they are going to go to net zero emissions—whatever that means—by 2050. They've committed to that. Therefore, we should act. In what universe should you do something based on what people say, not what they do? Smart people, sophisticated people, actually base their business decisions and their actions in life on action—what people actually do—not what they say. Anybody can say anything. It's very easy to say words. It's very easy to say: 'I'm going to do a 10-kilometre run this afternoon. I’m going to save lots of money this year. I'm going to cut back my spending.' It's very easy to say these things; it's a lot harder to do them.

We've seen that writ large through this climate change debate in recent years. For example, the New Zealand government has a net zero emissions commitment by 2050. They were just re-elected on that platform. They want to implement that policy. But they had a five per cent reduction by 2020 target under the Kyoto agreement. They wanted to cut their emissions by five per cent by this year. Guess what? Their emissions have only gone down by one per cent. They only got to 20 per cent of the target they committed to with the Kyoto agreement. But we're meant to believe: 'No, it will be different over the next 30 years. Don't look at what we've done; look at what we now promise to do in the next 30 years.' Why would we base our decisions in this country on that? Why would we put jobs and people's real livelihoods—people's actual jobs—and the sustainability of our public finances and our ability to fund our public services on the line?

Why would we put all that on the line based on the empty rhetoric and statements of other governments? Why would we put that on the line for the sake of the Paris Agreement, which doesn't impose any obligations on governments around the world? The Paris Agreement makes no binding commitments at all. That's demonstrated by the fact it never went through the US Senate, so it's not actually a treaty. It wasn't ticked off by the US Senate, as is required for treaties under the US Constitution. It's simply an agreement between countries that have no obligations to commit to it. No enforcement mechanisms were put in place at the behest of the Chinese government, which refused to sign up to proper accountability and enforcement under the agreement. There is no way of even knowing if other countries are doing what they say they are doing. So we should keep the long cherished principle of this nation that we decide what happens in this country. We should continue to act in the interests of those Australians who want to work, who want to have a job, who want to see our community thrive. We should not act on the views of those who are not in this country and we should certainly not act on the empty statements and rhetoric expressed by other governments that are not backed up by real action and real change.