Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Before I get into my questions and general remarks I want to place on the record my thanks to the staff and attendants of the Senate who so patiently supported the operations of this chamber last night. It was a long debate, concluding at about 4.30, as Senator McAllister, the minister, said. So I very much want to put on record my thanks, including to Hansard and all the other support that we receive in this place. It's an unusual workplace, and it can give rise to unusual settings like that. But it's important to recognise, indeed, the support that we are provided at strange hours of the day.

In my consideration of this legislation that's before us I, and on behalf of the coalition, want to commence by re-examining the pathways to where we are today and in doing so acknowledge that it was only a few minutes ago that we received the amendments that we are going to be considering, the amendments that are the fruit of the deal that's been done between Labor and the Greens. I think it's important to acknowledge that for proper debate and scrutiny to occur on these things we need time to deliberate. Now, I am pleased that, as I understand it, the government are going to allow debate on this bill to go on until it's exhausted—that is, until the guillotine falls on the debate of this bill at one o'clock tomorrow, including of course all the intervening items of business that this Senate will consider. But there is a lot to unpack here as a result of this murky deal that's been done. I want to revisit one element of it that concerns me most, and that is what now appears to have been feigned concern from the Australian Greens around the modelling that the Australian government would not provide in relation to this legislation.

A public interest immunity claim was lodged by the government in relation to the modelling that the Senate Environment and Communications Committee sought, and they said, 'No, you can't have it.' This modelling, relating to Australian carbon credit units, was cabinet-in-confidence, in the first instance, and then of course the excuse under public interest immunity claims changed to 'market sensitivities' down the track. Whatever the reason might be, they were determined not to provide it to us. Why? We don't know. My hunch is that it shows that a lot of what we're talking about here is not actually underpinned by solid modelling and it's all bunkum. But we'll never know.

The most concerning part was not the fact that the Australian government refused to provide transparency, refused to provide the information that I would have thought senators in this place would benefit from seeing to make an informed decision. The people in here are intelligent people, committed to their communities, committed to the people who work and live in their states. They would benefit from this information. Instead, the government have hidden it. They will keep it secret. That's fine. That's what they've done.

The most concerning part was this false concern the Australian Greens had in indicating to us that they wanted this modelling too. They put down their own motion, at the same time we put ours down. We said, 'No, you can't deal with this bill until we see the modelling.' I think that's fair. If there's nothing to hide, why hide it? Indeed, they wouldn't reveal it. The Greens put down a similar motion, suggesting, 'Well, we'd love to see it too but we won't stop debate on the bill until we change our minds.' The thing is—