Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate concur with the resolution of the House of Representatives contained in message No. 258 relating to the appointment of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, the coalition belie­ves that this suite of bills should not be submitted to a truncated joint committee as proposed by the Greens and the Labor Party. If we cast our minds back, for example, to when we had tax reform in this country, four separate specialist Senate committees were used over a period of five months to adequately air the issues at stake.

The Labor Party boasts and would say that its so-called carbon tax reform—that is anything but a reform; if anything, it will deform the Australian economy—is the biggest change and reform ever in Australian economic history. The Labor Party went to the 2007 election promising Operation Sunlight. Remember that term—Operation Sunlight—where the Labor Party said it would allow the sun to shine in, that everything would be adequately examined and that the Australian people, through the parliamentary processes, would be given sufficient time to consider all the issues on each and every occasion. Yet, here we have the suggestion of a joint committee to report by 5 October, if I am not mistaken—in literally a few days—on that which the Labor Party claims to be the biggest reform ever in Australian economic history.

The simple fact is the Labor Party and the Greens are trying to truncate this so that they can go to Durban with a piece of legislation that has passed the parliament. The Austra­lian nation has been in this space before. If we cast our minds back to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—that dismally failed—the imperative on that occasion was that we have it legislated by Copenhagen so we could waive some legislation around at Copenhagen and prove to the rest of the world what great leaders we were. Of course, what happened at Copenhagen was that not a single country was willing to sign up to that which, had we passed this legislation, would have made us look like the clowns of Copenhagen. Not having learnt from that, this Green-Labor alliance now wants Australia to look like the dunces of Durban, because they want this legislation passed so Ms Gillard can go to Durban and waive the legislation around and say: 'How clever are we? We are the only country in the world willing to deform our economy, to shed jobs and to shed wealth without making one slight bit of difference to the world's environment.'

The only environment that Labor and the Greens are concerned about is the environ­ment within the United Nations, and Mr Rudd's standing and Ms Gillard's standing. We, as the coalition, will not be part and parcel of sacrificing the Australian national interest on the altar of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard's vanity. It is going far too far for this parliament to agree to this suite of changes. I thought at one stage it was 13 bills, then it was 18, and I now understand it is 19 bills. Why is it that we should not fully explore the impact of this legislation? This carbon tax has a far-reaching impact. It will not only be on the 500 so-called biggest polluters. If it is the 500 biggest polluters, give us the list of the 500. It is about 500; it is not exactly 500. The government says, 'We cannot give you the list, but pass our legislation.' This is a government that is all about its own personal vanity and also a government led by the Australian Greens.

This Prime Minister, who is now seeking to drive this through the parliament with a truncated Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation, is the Prime Minister that went to the election last year claiming, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She has a choice: she either leads this govern­ment and has, therefore, misled the Austra­lian people or she does not lead this govern­ment because Senator Bob Brown and the Greens lead it. That is the question the Labor Party has to answer. It is not only Ms Gillard that needs to answer this question. Every single Labor backbencher has to look in the mirror and ask: given that I was elected on a promise of no carbon tax, how can I faithfully seek to represent my electors by voting for this legislation?

The Australian people are quite right to ask: how is it that a few Greens can dictate the policy when over 90 per cent of the parliamentarians in both houses in this place were elected on a bipartisan policy—and I want to stress this—of no carbon tax? Every single Labor member, every single coalition member, and I assume the new Democratic Labor Party senator as well, was elected on a promise of no carbon tax. The reason is that Ms Gillard will do anything she needs to do to retain the Prime Ministership. She will do anything and she will sacrifice the national interest in her vain bid to remain Prime Minister.

This carbon tax will have far-reaching consequences. I visited a manufacturer in Geelong with Senator Michael Ronaldson. It was a new business just restarting after a hiatus of a couple of years. Interestingly, their power bill in rough terms in manufact­uring came to $50,000 per month. If you take the government at its word—and I know it is foolish to do so, but let us do so just for this occasion—a 10 per cent hike in power prices would mean that over a 12-month period a start-up business now has $60,000 wiped off its bottom line just for its energy input. They said, 'Gee, that is a big hit, Senator.' Well, yes, it is. Moreover, they pay rates to the local government, don't they? Local govern­ment are huge consumers of energy. What are local government going to do? They will have to increase their rates, passed on to this company, to pay for the increased cost of energy and street lighting. So this small manufacturing business, just starting up again after a hiatus of two years, will see their costs increase by at least $60,000 per annum, if not a lot more.

We can go to the volunteer sector as well. What about Meals on Wheels? What about those that provide shelter to the homeless? They have energy bills as well. They will be slugged with this 10 per cent impost and that is being very generous to the government because most commentators are now saying the impost on energy bills will be a lot higher than 10 per cent. So you can look at the small business sector, you can look at the volunteer sector and you can look at big business. You can have a look at our mining and exports. Is this joint committee going to deal with all these aspects of all the legislati­on by 5 October? Of course not. The govern­ment and the Greens simply do not want proper scrutiny of this legislation because they are scared of what it will reveal if we go through this mammoth wad of papers and examine it word by word, clause by clause.

There is a huge issue at stake in relation to this carbon tax. It is a fundamental point. Senator Ludwig is busily making notes. The one point that he has to answer in this debate is: why did he and each of his cabinet colleagues go to the last election promising no carbon tax? Labor knew it was bad policy. Labour knew that, if Ms Gillard went to the people of Australia at the last election and said, 'Under a government I lead there will be a carbon tax because we will save the world through it,' she would not be Prime Minister today. Mr Abbott would be the Prime Minister of a majority coalition government. There is no doubt about that.

Indeed, when we said to the Australian people at the time, 'Don't believe the Labor Party,' what were we accused of? Senator Ludwig's Queensland colleague, the hapless Treasurer Mr Swan, said, 'It is an hysterical allegation.' In fact, it was not hysterical. It was historical because the Labor Party has form. They promise one thing before an election and then do exactly the opposite after. Every Australian that is old enough will remember Mr Keating promising the L-A-W law tax cuts and, as soon as he was re-elected in 1993, he repealed the laws. Not only did he not provide the tax cuts but he actually increased taxes. So we were being historical, not hysterical. How can the Labor Party look in the mirror every morning and say, 'How come we are going down this path'? There is a simple reason. Ms Gillard was willing to sell the national interest so she could remain Prime Minister. We have now heard this from Mr Adam Bandt, the Green member for Melbourne. If I have the date right, I think on 11 July he issued a press release saying that when he and Ms Gillard sat down to determine whether they could come to an agreement the first thing he asked for was a price on carbon, and she said yes without any argument. Why didn't Ms Gillard have the personal integrity, the backbone, the moral courage to say, 'Mr Bandt, thanks for the offer but I made a solemn promise to the Australian people. I gazed down a TV camera and said to the Australian people: there will be no carbon tax. I cannot go back on my word'? Does she really think that the Greens would have sided with the coalition in those circumstances? Of course not, but she was too weak, too desperate to retain the prime ministership. She was unwilling to take a stand even on such a fundamental issue.

I think that the Australian people are very responsible people, very sincere people. If they thought a carbon tax would provide a dividend for the environment, they would actually support it. But the overwhelming evidence is that a carbon tax in Australia, with Australia going it alone, will not provide an environmental dividend. That is the overwhelming evidence that you cannot overcome. The coalition would be willing to revisit this issue in the context of the world uniting and saying: 'Let's all do this together. Let's walk in lock-step to ensure that we all bring emissions down without disadvantag­ing one or the other country.' We would be willing to look at the issue again, but Australia acting alone is sheer lunacy. It is economic vandalism and will do nothing for the Australian environment. These are the issues that need to be aired. These are the issues that need to be discussed.

Indeed, Ms Gillard herself before the last election was so convinced that there was no consensus in the Australian community about going down this path that she was going to have her—what was it?—citizens assembly or something. There was to be an assembly of 150 people to try to build a consensus. She did not have the climate change group; she dropped that. Why? Because the Greens said it was a dumb idea, and for once I agree with the Greens. It was a dumb idea. It was a stupid idea and should never have been put up, but it indicates how devoid the Labor Party are of policy.

But the Labor Party have, and I congrat­ulate them on this, developed a consensus in the Australian community about climate change. The consensus is: no carbon tax. That is the consensus that Ms Gillard has been able to grow and develop within the Australian community. She is now confront­ed with this consensus, which is overwhelm­ing, even in my home state of Tasmania. I have seen some figures recently showing overwhelmingly that the Tasmanian people, like the Australian people in the national opinion polls, are awake to the nonsense of a carbon tax being introduced with Australia acting alone.

Let's not have this nonsense that people all around the world are adopting it. The minister might like to explain to the Austral­ian people and the Senate in this debate what Japan is doing, what France is doing, what the United States is doing, what New Zeal­and is doing, what Canada is doing, what New Hampshire is doing. Let's hold up the great economies that Ms Gillard held up like California when she was over there, and like Spain. These are the economies that have gone down this route and they are now econ­omic basket cases in anybody's language.

Take the European Union's trading scheme, which is one-tenth of that which we would impose on our own nation. It is 10 times as high, 10 times as devastating and, what is more, 10 times as rortable. We know there are scandals in the European system. In as sophisticated a country as Norway they are now having investigations into the rort­ing of the carbon tax scheme over there. With 10 times as much money available here, one would anticipate that there will be 10 times the temptation to rort the system. Where are the protections in this legislation in relation to that? Where are the protections to ensure that over $3 billion worth of Australian capital does not flow out of our nation each and every year in the vain pursuit of purchasing carbon credits elsewhe­re in the world?

These are matters worthy of detailed consideration, not to be lightly dealt with by a so-called joint committee that will look at these matters for a matter of a few days and then report with a foregone conclusion. This is a matter deserving of this parliament's specialist committees having a very, very close look at the detail—how it is going to impact on the volunteer sector, on the small business sector and on big businesses.

Speaking of big businesses, let's turn to our export industries. Ms Gillard goes to the coalmines and says, 'No worries—the coal­mining and coal export industry will go full throttle under my government.' Strange, that, isn't it? We are willing to sell our coal to the rest of the world for one purpose only: they will burn it for energy. And we will sell it to them without a carbon tax. But if Australians in Australia want to burn Australian coal they will be subjected to a carbon tax. Some people might say that that is a double standard. Most people would say that there is some inconsistency here. But this is typical of Labor Party policy, because coal now seems to have gone into the same category as uranium. The Labor Party says of uranium, 'Yes, let's export it to the rest of the world to allow them to make energy from it,' but then they say to the Australian people it is some­how immoral for Australians to use their own uranium to create energy in Australia. So the inconsistency is in fact consistent on both uranium and coal, but the Australian people are quite right to ask: where is the consistency, where is the morality, in that stand? And there is none. There is an inconsistency that cannot be explained.

We as a coalition support the view that these matters should be canvassed in detail and given due consideration, but to try to set up a joint committee with a truncated time­table so that we can become the dunces of Durban like Mr Rudd wanted us to be the clowns of Copenhagen is not on the coalition's agenda. We will not bend to the Greens in relation to this. We will fight this carbon tax all the way and ensure that all aspects of it are properly exposed for the benefit of the Australian people.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just heard '10 times this' and '10 times that'. I think what we just heard was 10 times the ignorance of what we normally find from the coalition when it comes to a discussion of climate change and how to appropriately act upon it. I preface my remarks with the fact that the science is just becoming very clear that this year we are going to have an even greater record of ice melt in the Arctic. The scientists are coming out saying that they are finding an even more extreme Arctic ice melt than in previous years, and we know the impact of that. They are suggesting that, rather than having an ice-free Arctic in 70 years, we might end up having an ice-free Arctic in 30 to 40 years.

We know what that means for species extinction for a start. Nobody can escape the fact that, whatever technological response people might have to the impacts of extreme weather events, there is nothing we can do to save species which are going to extinction because of climate change.

I know that, when you talk to people around the world about their local environ­ments, what they talk about is the changed conditions, and no more so than in Tasmania, where the fishing community talks at length about the warming of the east coast waters off Tasmania, about the fact that the eastern Australian current is now moving further south into Tasmanian waters and the cold up­surge from the Antarctic is receding, which is allowing the incursion of predators into that environment, destroying the kelp beds, undermining the fishery and so on. That is just a local example in Tasmania of the phys­ical response that is going on with climate change as we see it as a regular event.

Having said that, at the same time as we are having this debate, the Bureau of Meteor­ology have been briefing the Queensland cabinet about the likely impacts this summer of extreme weather events. They are talking about the likely formation of at least four cyclones off the Queensland coast and the likelihood of extreme rainfall events, and already in Queensland people are on alert because of extreme fire danger.

Australia more than any other continent in the world is vulnerable to climate change, and we are seeing climate change acceler­ating, so we have no option but to address climate change if we are serious about making sure that not only this generation but future generations and our fellow species on this planet have an opportunity to live and experience and appreciate a similar environ­ment to the one we have now. Frankly, we are losing that race.

I am the first to say that, whilst what we are doing with this carbon package of bills begins the process of transforming Australia to a low-carbon economy and begins the pro­cess of addressing climate change seriously, it does not go far enough. If the Greens had been in government, we would certainly have been aiming for a much higher level of ambition than the bills generate, but we are pleased to say that the bills do not prevent any of the areas being increased in their level of ambition over time. That is because we know that as the world wakes up to itself there will be a move internationally for every country to lift its level of ambition in terms of greenhouse gas emission cuts and the speed at which it transforms its economy. The thing about all of these carbon bills is that, if the coalition were interested in actually reading them, they would find that there is no limit to parliament in the future being able to increase the level of ambition without having to pay compensation, which was one of the major problems with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It would have meant considerable compensa­tion if Australia raised its ambition to a greater than 25 per cent cut—and that will be necessary over time. We need to be net carbon zero by 2050. Eighty per cent is not enough but 80 per cent is a long way better than where it was before at a 60 per cent cut, and that is one of the things we were able to achieve as part of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee.

Having said that, I think it is essential that we concur with this motion from the House of Representatives, which urges that we set up a joint committee to allow the community to have input into these bills and to allow the coalition to actually get across the policy, because we have heard a whole lot of slogan­ism and fear tactics out there and a lot of unsubstantiated statements but we have not heard any engagement of the policy issues that are in these bills.

This series of legislation goes to a package which is saying that, in order to get our greenhouse gas emissions down and allow ourselves to have a consistent message for investors—and that is one of the key components here; the reason we have power prices going up now is that there has not been the investment that needed to occur, and that is because of the level of uncertain­ty. What we are now doing in this package of bills is that, on the one hand, we are intro­ducing an emissions trading scheme, a market based mechanism that will require those businesses that are big polluters to pay for their pollution to the atmosphere. Over time that will force them to reduce the level of emissions and it will help to drive a transformation in the energy sector out of coal fired generation and into gas. But that is not going to be enough to bring on renew­able energy. We know that. A $23 price is nowhere near enough to bring on renewable energy, and so we need to bring in a series of measures that will promote renewables. If we are to have the transformation that I am talking about, and if we are going to have it in the time frame that is necessary and get to 100 per cent renewable energy as quickly as possible, we have to be building at scale, right now, large renewable energy generation capacity and also we have to be investing in a grid—and a smart grid at that—so that we can then take up the opportunities that energy efficiency provides. The coalition has gone back to an eastern European model of government regulation and government paying for everything. It is an extraordinary irony in Australian politics that the party which so prides itself on supporting business has actually abandoned business, abandoned market based mechanisms, abandoned econ­omists and instead just gone back to a government regulatory way of dealing with a cut of only five per cent—and even that will not be achieved by what the coalition is actually proposing.

We are putting in place a mechanism that will allow a massive investment in renew­able energy in Australia. The community desperately wants this investment in renew­able energy. Australia is blessed with some of the best renewable energy resources in the world and so a key component of this package is an investment in renewable energy—$10 billion to be invested in renewables over time. This will enable the community to become what the British call prosumers—that is, producers of energy and consumers of energy at the same time. For somebody to make decisions about how much they will pay to generate from their house, how much they will pay to buy in and where they can engage in energy efficiency, you need a smart grid. One of the key components in the legislation requires the Australian Energy Market Operator to state art looking at planning for 100 per cent renewable energy. When the community understands this is a key component of the legislation, they will be excited by it. Australians want to see the technology developed in Australian universities by Australian experts actually in the field in Australia. One of the things people raise with me all the time is that they are fed up with our best and brightest going overseas because there is no hope for them working for a renewable energy future in this country. This legislation emphasises the ability of this country to do good things.

It is the same with energy efficiency. We know that buildings are one of the major emitters of greenhouse gases, and in addition bringing in energy efficiency reforms gives us a healthier workplace. Go to any green building and you will find it is healthier, you have greater productivity from your work­force, fewer sick days, and it is a cheaper building to run. That is where we need to be going in this country with the built environ­ment, and this is an incentive. And this is all a jobs creator. All these things are about adding sophistication into the economy, instead of doing what the coalition wants—for us to be Asia's quarry: dig it up, cut it down and ship it overseas. Keep digging up the coal and send it out of the country; put in the gas wells and send the gas out of the country; that is all you need to do. The Greens believe it is time to look at the fact that we have hollowed out the manufacturing sector. We need to build resilience in the Australian economy; we need to build a competitive position in a low-carbon econ­omy. That is what these bills start to do.

Equally, there is a fourth pillar—the Carbon Farming Initiative, which has been through both houses of parliament. This initiative addresses the fact that rural and regional Australia can play a major role in enhancing carbon in the landscape—ena­bling farmers to do what they actually want to do but have not had the money to do, and that is engage in stewardship of the land and so improve not only their soil carbon but their management of biodiversity by revegetating areas and improving degraded areas of their properties. All of these things are in the bills. That is why it is exciting and that is what why what we are hearing is the last gasp from the coalition in opposition to this—because there is no roar out there in the community. Business is satisfied that this is going ahead and that they will engage with it.

That is where I come to the great big lie out there at the moment in the statement by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, that he will repeal these bills. I am glad to have the opportunity to put this on the record. Every time the Leader of the Opposition stands up and says he will repeal these bills he is building a bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger lie. He is not going to repeal the bills. We had all that with the Carbon Farming Initiative—day after day, 13 hours in this place, about how bad it was. It was bad, bad, bad for rural Australia and then we heard this weak little voice in the House of Representatives on the third reading saying, 'Oh, the coalition will not repeal the Carbon Farming Initiative if it gets into government'. Round one, the first major plank of the new clean energy package going through the parliament, and the coalition says they will not repeal it. Let me put it on the record that they will not repeal any of these bills. This legislation will not be repealed. It is a great big lie. I want the Leader of the Opposition to be out every day saying he is going to repeal it, because we will find exactly the same thing happening again—his opposition will fade away into nothingness.

His opposition will fade away into nothingness because business is seriously engaged. Big business in Australia is going to have to buy permits, we are going to have small businesses across the country making the changes, we are going to have consumers looking at how they can engage and we are going to have superannuation investors—with trillions of dollars in superannuation—looking at investing in the smart grid. People will be looking at investments in new renewable energy projects, and they want certainty for their investment. They need to know the terms of that investment—it is over a long period of time—and if they invest they will not thank the coalition for coming in and trying to repeal the legislation. Furthermore, when they buy these carbon permits there will be property rights and the coalition will have to compensate every big business around the country who has bought and banked carbon permits. They will have to go out there and compensate them. All I can hear is an echo around the country—this great big new lie. That is what this promise that the coalition would repeal these bills will end up being—because it will not repeal them. Therefore, I would urge the coalition to stop carrying on with this sham. The coalition refused to participate in the multi-party climate committee. Two positions were made available for the coalition to participate in that committee. If they had been serious about engaging in climate change they would have been on the committee and in the debates on how best to bring in carbon pricing in Australia in a way that was integrated across government, that ensured that the people paying were the polluters, that the community was compensated in the way it has been proposed and that is exactly what we have done.

I would like to hear the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, stand up and say that he will remove the increases to the pension and that he will reduce the tax-free threshold when he gets elected. He will not do it and it will not happen, because it is a great big new lie. That is why I think, as we get closer and closer to the next election, people will see this for what it has been. It has been a giant, hot air bubble of fear that is rapidly losing any kind of impetus in the community. Business have been coming out in the last 24 hours, saying, 'We're engaging this legislation, we're looking at how it will affect our businesses and we are working out ways we will engage with it.' What we are getting for business, the community, our children and fellow species are internally consistent pieces of legislation which will start the process of seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transforming the energy sector out of coal into gas, investing in renewables, getting into energy efficiency and enabling rural and regional Australia to play its part. We will see an increasing number of people exposing the kind of nonsense that we have heard. Senator Abetz has stood up here and said that other countries are not doing anything. If you say it over and over again, all it will do is reinforce the ignorance of Senator Abetz.

California is going to an emissions trading on 1 January next year. It is the eighth largest economy in the world. Four provinces in China are going to emissions trading. That is a huge economic equation. They are going to that with a view to going to national emissions trading within a few years time. We have the European Union and New Zealand and there will be an international linkage of these.

Yesterday there was a briefing in this building by four experts, who have been brought here by the climate commission. And I note that nobody from the coalition bothered to turn up, because why would you let information get in the way of ignorance? One was a policy adviser from California and one was from the World Bank, who was an expert in the grid. They were talking about their ability to engage with Australia, to learn from each other and to link those economies. These are enormous opportu­nities for Australia and Australian busi­nesses. That is not being lost on the business sector, nor is it being lost on the next generation of academics and young people leaving our universities with skills, who want to use those skills to secure a safe climate for the future. That is what young people want. People want to align their values with their work, because it makes you happier if you align your values with your work. Young people are saying: we want to put our shoulder to the wheel in whatever we do to reduce climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to use our brains and our best endeavours for the betterment of this country, the planet, our children and fellow species. And good on them.

That is why you have such a large number of people with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition across Australia. Everywhere I go young people are motivated because they are worried about species extinction. People ridicule the Greens when we talk about the fact that the polar bear, for example, is drowning in the Arctic because of the loss of the sea ice and because they cannot hunt and feed, so they are starving in some areas. We are watching a tragedy of an iconic species. But they are not alone. There are species in every ecosystem losing out because of the changes we are seeing with climate change. In Northern Australia, we have seen the impacts of the extreme flooding events last year on the Barrier Reef, with sediment all over the sea grasses and the impact on the dugongs, for example. This is in our own country. As I said, in Tasmania the sea urchin is impacting on the magnificent kelp beds on the east coast of Tasmania, not to mention on the productivity of the fishery. No matter how much carrying on there is from the opposition, trying to beat up fear, the reality is that people in Queensland know that climate change is real. They have experienced it with the extreme weather events. People in Victoria who lived through the fires understand extreme weather events and so do people all around the world witnessing what we have seen with food insecurity as a result of some of these events.

I look forward to this committee process, I look forward to representing the Greens on this committee and I look forward to getting these bills through and the legislation being operational by 1 July next year. I especially look forward to Mr Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, defending the great big new lie that he will repeal the bills, because there is no way he will do it. The community will be horrified when they find out just what an empty promise that is. (Time expired)

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And so it starts—the steps by the Australian Labor Party to deny appropriate scrutiny of the carbon tax legislation. It starts here and it starts now with this motion. Let us be clear: this motion seeks to corral 19 bills into one committee. Basically, the motion seeks to rack 'em and stack 'em. It seeks to rack the bills into one committee and to stack the committee. What I mean by 'stack' the committee is that the crossbench­ers in the House get two members on this committee. The Australian Labor Party get four members on this committee. The coalition only get three members on this committee. So we have four ALP and two crossbenchers—that is, six versus three coalition members. The coalition comprises darn near half the members of the Australian House of Representatives. But it is a stack and they are seeking to rack 'em. It is bad enough that the government sought to evade the scrutiny of the Australian people. It is bad enough that the government went to the Australian people with a lie. It is bad enough that the government formed office on the back of a lie. That lie—perhaps the greatest lie known in Australian contemporary history—was that the Gillard government would not implement a carbon tax. The words that the Prime Minister used—I think you know them well, Mr Acting Deputy President Back—were, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Does anyone seriously believe that the Labor Party would have won enough seats to cobble together a government had they come clean with the Australian people at the election? Of course they would not have. In fact, every Labor member of the House of Representa­tives and every Labor senator who was facing the people at the last election was in fact elected, put into office, on a platform that there would be no carbon tax. If there is any mandate here in this parliament it is a mandate from the people to not have a carbon tax. That electoral fraud—in a moral sense I use that phrase—is something for which the ALP will be and should be answerable and accountable to the people at the polls. And who knows when that will be. But the place where the government of the day is accountable and is answerable be­tween elections is this place and the other place. That occurs in the committees and in the debates of this parliament.

Having managed, quite successfully I must say, to evade public scrutiny, the least the government should do is to allow the most full-blooded scrutiny and debate in this place. The model for parliamentary scrutiny of significant economic change—I do not use the word 'reform', I use the word 'change'; the carbon tax is not an economic reform, it is an economic change—is the GST. The GST, I believe, was for good. It must have been for good. Even the Australian Labor Party must agree with that, because they did not seek to repeal the GST legislation once they came into office. I would argue that the carbon tax, in contrast, is change which is for ill. It is change which is far, far wider reaching. It has a much greater reach into the Australian economy than the GST did. As such, as a more significant economic change, it does deserve even greater scrutiny. As I say, the model for scrutiny is the GST.

I think it is important to go through the steps which the previous government went through to ensure adequate scrutiny of the GST. Firstly, the coalition—minor detail to the Australian Labor Party—went to a poll. The coalition went to an election and said, 'It is our proposal, it is our intention, if elected, to introduce a goods and services tax.' That is what we did. We sought a mandate; we received a mandate. No hiding, no subter­fuge, no lies: a mandate was sought and it was granted. Minor detail—just a techni­cality for those opposite. But on this side of the chamber we think it is kind of important. Having won a mandate, it was submitted to the most searching and the most searing scrutiny of any package of legislation that has been before the Australian parliament.

On 2 December 1998 the package of GST bills was introduced into the House of Representatives. It sat on the table until 7 December. Then almost 15 hours was allo­cated to the second reading debate. That legislation was passed on 10 December 1998. The GST legislation then spent five months going through Senate committees—five months. That is pretty extraordinary when you think about it. Compare it to the mere weeks of scrutiny that this carbon tax legislation, which will been more profound in its effect on the economy, will have. The next step in that process of scrutiny was on 25 November 1998. The Senate, at the start of that five-month period, established the Senate Select Committee on a New Tax System. That committee also referred issues to three separate Senate references commit­tees. You might be aware, Mr Acting Deputy President Back—and I am sure you are—that references committees are actually chaired by the non-government parties, which again I think is an important part of scrutiny. Those committees had until the end of March 1999 to report. The legislation went to the Com­munity Affairs References Committee, the Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Comm­ittee and to the Environment, Communi­cations, Information Technology and Arts References Committee. This was a good and a proper process. The bills were introduced, they sat on the table, there was adequate debate, they came to the Senate, they went to four Senate committees and there was five months of examination. We did not rush. Contrast that with what is proposed here. The House will have 12 hours to consider 19 bills. There are more than 1,000 pages of legislation and there will be 12 hours to consider 19 bills.

We did the right thing when we were in government. This government should follow that example. The truth is there is no rush. There is no rush for this legislation. It may be a self-evident proposition to those on this side of the chamber, but if there is a delay of many months the world will not end. I know that is hard for some in this chamber to comprehend, but if there is decent examin­ation over many months of this legislation, let us be clear: the world will not end. The new rationale which the Australian Greens are citing for rapid passage of this legisla­tion—and we can only conclude that the government concurs with this—is the Durban conference in December. I put much more stock in the view of the Australian people and place much greater significance on the need for appropriate scrutiny than I do on the desire of the government and the Greens to strut at Durban, to be able to wave their legislation around and say: 'Aren't you impressed? Look what we've done.' I actually do not care what anyone in Durban thinks, whatever country they are from. All I care about is what the Australian people think, what the effect of this legislation will be on their standard of living and what the effect will be on the capacity of Australian businesses to go about selling their goods and services, making a living and employing people. That is what I care about.

One of the best predictors of future beha­viour is past behaviour. Copenhagen was the last big conference at which we had lots of people strutting around—remember Mr Rudd? He was doing the big strut at Copenhagen. I do not think anyone would think that that was a huge success. Thank goodness we did not fall for the argument that we absolutely had to pass the ETS legislation before Copenhagen because otherwise we would be left behind because the rest of the world was going to agree at Copenhagen. Well, they did not. They were never going to. Nothing hangs on Durban.

The government should withdraw this motion. They should withdraw the 19 bills from the House. They should discharge those bills from the House. They should call an election. They should submit themselves, this tax and the legislation to the judgment of the Australian people. I have to confess that I have some doubts that they might win an election seeking to sell a carbon tax. I just have that sneaking suspicion, but let us say I am crazy, let us say I am wrong, let us say the Australian Labor Party score the most stunning electoral victory in Australian history by going to the next election saying, 'We will introduce a carbon tax.' Let us just ponder that for a moment. I am happy to assume that that is a theoretical possibility. I am happy to concede that, if the government discharged the legislation in the House, called an election and said to the Australian people, 'Vote us in; we want to introduce a carbon tax,' it is a theoretical possibility that they could win. I confess that I have a few doubts that they would, but let us assume that they did win. Then by all means reintroduce the carbon tax legislation.

But, whether they did that or whether they were in the circumstance they are in now, they should ensure that there is appropriate time, something in the order of five months, to give proper parliamentary scrutiny to this legislation. Even if the whole parliament agrees on legislation, that legislation still should get appropriate scrutiny. That is our job. We are legislators. Particularly in the Senate, it is our job to scrutinise. It is our job to critique. It is our job to review. It is our job to question even legislation which we might support. That is our job. We are a house of review in the Westminster system.

It is clear that the government do not respect that role. The government do not respect that function of this chamber. It is also clear that the government lack the cour­age to face the people. We know they are gutless. We know they lie to the Australian people. We take that as read. We do not expect them to call a snap poll to do the right thing to put their proposition to the Austra­lian people. But, if they are not going to do that, at the very least they should have the decency to observe a proper parliamentary process. That should be the minimum that they do. Sure, they lie to the Australian people. They are the Australian Labor Party; that is what you expect. They will face their judgment at the next election. But the place where the government are accountable between elections is in this place. The place where their policies and their legislation should be scrutinised is here in this place.

There should be a proper allocation of legislation to the appropriate Senate committees. In fact, we already have a very good committee which is chaired by Senator Cormann, the Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes. The title of that committee is very interesting. There has not really been a need before for a Senate committee specifically to scrutinise new taxes, because most previous governments, Labor or Liberal, have introduced new taxes but have often had offsetting tax cuts pursu­ing the process of tax reform. This is a need which Senator Cormann and his committee are very well fulfilling. There is the opportu­nity for the Senate to take advantage of that committee. We have references committees. We have standing legislative committees. They are there for a purpose, and there should be an appropriate and sensible allo­cation of these bills to those committees for scrutiny.

We will not be complicit in facilitating the electoral deceit of the Australian Labor Party. We know that the Australian Labor Party in this place will seek extra hours. We know that they will seek extra sitting weeks, the purpose of which is to give effect to a lie. We feel under absolutely no obligation to facilitate that in any way, shape or form. But there should be appropriate scrutiny. There should be no rush. There is no reason—no reason at all. I urge those opposite to salvage some dignity. I know there are Labor memb­ers and Labor senators who are appalled by the intention of this government to introduce a carbon tax. They will tell you, as you sit next to them quietly during a division, what they really think. They will tell you in the corridors of this place what they really think. Senator Conroy, who has been outed in the press, makes it clear to any businessman who will listen that the carbon tax will be a disaster for the Australian economy and that he does not support this. We know that. And we know Martin Ferguson's real view. We know the view of the adults in the Australian Labor Party. The view of the grown-ups is that they do not want a carbon tax.

The way for the Australian Labor Party to salvage some dignity, if they are not going to call an election and if they are not going to abandon the carbon tax, is to decouple them­selves from the Australian Greens. I think we had an example a little earlier as to why that should be the case. Senator Milne referred to 'fellow species'. I do not think most Austra­lians or even most Labor senators would be comfortable with being referred to as just a 'fellow species' of other animals. Mr Acting Deputy President Back, you have a veterin­ary background, and even you might be a little uncomfortable with being referred to as a member of a 'fellow species'. It is strange language. I know that in Senator Milne's contribution it was put in the context of species extinction. But if there is a species that is facing extinction, I think it is the members of the Australian Labor Party in the House of Representatives. If they persist in pursuing this deceit—if they persist in seeking to legislate their lie from the last election—then I think they will indeed be the ones facing species extinction.

It is time for the Australian Labor Party to take the field again for working people. They have vacated that space. The only parties in this place, and in the other place, that repre­sent working people are the Liberal Party of Australia and the Nationals. The Australian Labor Party have completely vacated that field—and they wonder why working people are deserting them in droves.

The Labor Party should abandon this venture. They should discharge the carbon tax bills in the House of Representatives. They should have the decency to call an election. They should have the decency to seek a mandate from the Australian people for the introduction of a carbon tax. If they really have the strength of their convict­ions—if they really believe that the virtues of a carbon tax for the Australian economy are self-evident—then they should have no hesitation in putting that to the Australian people. But they have yet to do so. They did not do so before the last election and they are not proposing to give the Australian people an electoral opportunity in which to do so. We on this side of the chamber sought to facilitate that possibility through a plebiscite bill. The government opposed that in the other place. We think that would have been an appropriate mechanism for the Australian people to have their say, but that mechanism was also denied them.

I hope this legislation is not passed, but if it is passed through the House and if it is passed through the Senate then we on this side vow that the fight against the carbon tax will not be over. The fight against the carbon tax will go on. We will take the repeal of the carbon tax to the next election. If the carbon tax legislation has been implemented in this parliament, we will repeal it in the next. That is our solemn commitment. That is our promise to the Australian people. The fight on the carbon tax in this place starts today and will continue. (Time expired)

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The people of Australia do not want this carbon tax. The Prime Minister promised them before the last election that there would be no carbon tax. Now the Prime Minister wants to rush this bad carbon tax through the parliament, because she realises that the more time the parliament and the people of Australia have in which to talk about it—the more time they have in which to scrutinise it—the more unpopular this bad tax is likely to become.

History and the people of Australia will judge the Prime Minister harshly for the deceit inflicted on them before the last elect­ion. History and the Australian people will judge every single Labor Party member and senator harshly for supporting a tax which clearly is not in our national interest, which clearly is going to inflict a lot of harm on household budgets and on the economy without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason people are as opposed to this tax as they are is that they actually 'get it'. The government is speaking the truth when it says that we have been having a debate in this country for some time now about this whole concept of pricing carbon. The longer this debate has gone on, the more people have realised that there is absolutely no prospect of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions through a price on carbon in Australia if none of the other major emitters are going down that same path. To ask people in Australia to accept a price on carbon when China, the US, India and a whole range of other countries we compete with are not going down that path will just push up the cost of everything here in Australia. It will make us less competitive internationally, it will cost jobs and it will put our energy security at risk—all without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The people of Australia were entitled to believe, after three years of debate on this—between 2007 and 2010—that the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had come to the same conclusion. We had a very intensive debate in the parliament and across Australia over the last three years. That debate was in the context of, and in the lead-up to, the so-called Copenhagen conference. At that time, people thought there was a prospect that countries around the world might reach agreement on an appropriately comprehen­sive global arrangement to price carbon. That did not happen. In this chamber we voted twice against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation proposed by the Rudd government. The Senate voted twice against that legislation, with coalition and Greens senators joining to defeat a piece of legisla­tion that was clearly seen by the Senate as inadequate. But what is on the table now is at least as inadequate, if not more inadequate, as what was on the table before.

After the debate that went on between 2007 and 2010, in the last parliament, we now know that Ms Gillard went to see Mr Rudd and said, 'Kill the CPRS; don't go ahead with it.' It is a matter of public record that the Prime Minister went to the last election promising that there would be 'no carbon tax under a government I lead'. We also know that the Prime Minister went to the last election saying that she would do everything she could to build community consensus around the proposition of pricing carbon. She clearly has given up on that. She clearly is trying to ram this legislation through not just this parliament but against the express wishes of the Australian people. After the election, when put under pressure by the Greens and in an effort to hold onto government by Senator Bob Brown's finger­nails, she went out in February and said there will now be a carbon tax. But she also said, 'I'm going to do everything I can to convince people that this is a good idea.' Guess what? The judgement is in, and people do not like it and do not want it. People understand that it will not do anything to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They understand that it will push up the cost of electricity, that it will push up the cost of everything, and that it will cost jobs and put Australia's economy under pressure for no good reason.

We were told back in February: 'Don't you worry. People might not like the carbon tax now but as soon as all the detail is out, as soon as people know about the compen­sation, as soon as people know about the transitional assistance, it will be okay and people will like it. Once people see the detail, people will like what they see.' Guess what? The detail was announced and people still did not like it. We were then told that the Prime Minister was going to wear out her shoe leather. The Prime Minister was going to walk up and down every main street of every town and convince people, one by one, that this carbon tax is a good idea, that this carbon tax is all Australia needs. After two weeks of that, the carbon tax was more unpopular than ever. Very quickly the Prime Minister gave up on that as well because she was confronted by real people on the streets of Australia and real people in the shopping centres of Australia who called it for what it was. We well remember the Prime Minister in a shopping centre in Queensland being confronted with the question: why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us before the last election that there would be no carbon tax only to turn around after the election and say that there will be one?

During that two weeks of meeting with real people who were telling her the truth, what the Prime Minister realised was that the worst thing the government could do would be to allow too much debate and too much scrutiny of this dud tax. I have been chairing the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes for the last 12 months or so. When we put on the agenda for the commit­tee an inquiry into a carbon tax, the Labor members of the committee said, 'How can you put that on for this committee, because there will be no carbon tax?' This was actually after the election. In hindsight that is quite funny. When my committee wanted to have a look at the carbon tax to be introdu­ced by the government, or at any other pricing mechanism on carbon or at an emiss­ions trading scheme, Labor members of the committee in September or October of last year said, 'How can you possibly put that on the agenda for this committee, because there won't be one?'

The detail was announced on 10 July and the legislation, a thousand pages of it, was released on 29 July, but through my committee we have only been able to scratch the surface. Treasury and Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency officials appeared before a number of hear­ings and were unable to answer a whole series of very important questions in relation to this very bad tax. This government does not want officials of the Treasury or of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to be exposed to too many quest­ions. The secretary of the climate change department, for example, was asked where the figure of 500 big polluters came from. He said, 'It won't be 500; it'll be way less than that.' He said that it would be about 400 or something like that, only to be told by the minister within three or four hours to correct his evidence, because the government's adve­rtising campaign was of course built around the proposition of 500 big polluters. Far be it from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to allow the accusation to stand that this was misleading advertising from the government, based on evidence from his own departmental secretary.

Treasury was not given time to properly model the carbon tax package that was actually announced and Treasury never actually assessed the impact of the carbon tax on jobs. We have been told by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, that the carbon tax will have no impact on jobs, and he relied on Treasury modelling to make that assertion. But, when you look at it, Treasury never assessed the impact on jobs at all. Treasury assumed that there would be no impact on jobs. They included a rule in the model to say there will be no impact on jobs and then the Treasurer dishonestly went out and said, 'Look at this Treasury modelling, it shows there will be in no impact on jobs.' There is lie after lie after lie in that Treasury model­ling and, of course, we have had people appear before us—very credible economic modellers like Frontier Economics—who have said quite bluntly that the assumptions that are used by Treasury in their modelling, presumably at the direction of the govern­ment, are not plausible, are not realistic and are not real-world assumptions. The impact of that is that the Treasury modelling severely underestimates the impacts that the carbon tax will have on the cost of living, on the economy and on jobs and severely overe­stimates the impact that it will have on reducing emissions. Now the truth of the matter is that, even on the government's own figures, it is a pretty bad tax because elect­ricity is going to go up by 10 per cent in year one and go up and up after that as the carbon tax continues to go up. Even on the govern­ment's own figures, emissions in Australia are not going to go down; emissions in Australia are going to continue to go up from about 578 million tonnes to about 621 million tonnes.

So then the government says, 'Oh, but emissions are going to be lower than they otherwise would have been'—interesting, so where are those emissions going to go? Those emissions are going to go to manu­facturing businesses in China, India and the US and all the other places that manufact­uring businesses in Australia compete with, but the businesses in those countries will not be facing that same cost. As we make overseas manufacturers more competitive and help them take market share away from equivalent businesses here in Australia, all we will be doing is shifting emissions overseas, arguably into places where envir­onmental standards are lower and where emissions are going to be higher. All we will be doing is imposing a sacrifice on people here in Australia without actually making any difference to the environment.

We are told that the carbon tax is going to stop the floods, stop the droughts, stop sea levels rising and save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania. If only we had known that a carbon tax could fix all of those ills! We should have come up with it a long time ago. But, guess what: I do not believe that a carbon tax will save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania; I do not believe that a carbon tax will stop the droughts; I do not believe that a carbon tax will stop the floods; and I do not believe that a carbon tax will have any impact on rising sea levels. A carbon tax which will shift emissions overseas, a carbon tax which will reduce emissions in Australia in a way that will increase them by arguably more in other parts of the world, is not effective action on climate change; it is a deliberate act of economic self-harm.

This is exactly the point that the Australian people understand. The Australian people understand that not only were they lied to before the last election but they are still being lied to now. They are being asked to believe that somehow putting on a $23 a tonne tax on carbon is going to stop sea levels rising. They are being asked to believe that this $23 a tonne tax on carbon, which is going to push up the cost of their electricity, is somehow going to save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania. Well, guess what: it will not. It will hurt people's hip pocket, it will increase cost-of-living pressures and it will put jobs at risk, but it will not save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania to the extent that they are actually at risk.

I look at this whole issue and wonder. If the Prime Minister was really committed to pricing carbon, if the Prime Minister was really committed to a carbon tax and if she really thought it was such a good idea, why didn't she tell the Australian people before the last election? Why did she stop trying to build a community consensus? Why did she stop wearing out her shoe leather? Why does she now want to ram it through this parliament without having taken this proposal for significant economic change to an election so that the Australian people could pass judgment? The reason is this Prime Minister knows that the Australian people do not want it and that, given an opportunity to pass judgment, they would chuck her out of office. That is why she is trying to rush this through. That is why she never told the Australian people the truth before the last election. That is why she did not even try to build community consensus. This Prime Minister has divided Australia in her incredibly irresponsible and reckless push to impose a carbon tax. She has divided Australia rather than build community consensus. She has united a large part of Australia against this government in her attempt to ram through this carbon tax.

The single reason why the government are moving this motion here today is they do not want on the committees with the job of scru­tinising these sorts of pieces of legislation senators who will ask the hard questions, because they do not have the answers. Incidentally, when I look at the composition of this committee in this motion, I see a significant outrage as far as the Senate's representation on it is concerned. It is funny that from the House of Representatives there is to be representation from the opposition, from the government and from the Greens and there is provision for one non-aligned member to be appointed to the committee, which is to consist of 14 members—so four members to be nominated by the government from the House of Representatives, three members to be nominated by the opposition from the House of Representatives and one Greens member and one non-aligned member to be nominated. But look at who is in this motion to represent the Senate. From the Senate all we get are two senators from the government, two senators from the oppo­sition and one Greens senator. What about Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan? There is no representative from the cross­bench. Both Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan have taken a very close interest in this carbon tax issue. Senator Xenophon has done so at great personal expense on occasions. Senator Madigan is a very hard­working and very active member of the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes. He happens to be the true labour representative of working families across Australia—the only labour representative of working families across Australia in this chamber. The Australian Labor Party has sold out working families across Australia. But because Senator John Madigan, who represents the DLP in this chamber, does not agree with the Australian Labor Party on its push for a carbon tax, he has been comple­tely ignored. He has been cast aside. The government effectively has three senators represented on this committee; the opposit­ion has two; and the crossbench, consisting of Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan, has been completely ignored.

The carbon tax is a bad tax. The carbon tax is a tax which we were promised we would not have. The people of Australia do not want this tax. The people of Australia were promised they would not get this tax. The people of Australia will judge the Prime Minister harshly at the next election for having lied to them at the last election. The people of Australia will judge every single Labor member and senator in this parliament harshly at the next election because they are all part of this deception. Instead of doing the right thing and allowing proper scrutiny of this legislation to proceed, instead of doing the right thing and taking it to an election after it is properly scrutinised, they want to ram a bad piece of legislation through this chamber, which they well know the Austra­lian people do not want, and the Australian Labor Party stand condemned for it.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, I am going to give you the call.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion started out as a message from the House of Represent­atives.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You need to move that the question be now put.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. There are clearly at least two other speakers who would like to participate in this debate. Is it appropriate to call the minister next when he has indicated he wants to stifle further debate, to effectively guillotine this debate? Could I, by way of point of order, suggest that you may in those circumstances want to call other senators who might want to speak and leave the minister who has clearly indicated he wants to terminate the debate to the time when nobody else wants to speak?

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that I can call the minister to move that motion. He has indicated that that is what he is going do, and he has done that. The minister has moved that the question be now put.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the basis that two further speakers on the other side want to speak, I will allow them to speak before I move the motion. I seek leave to withdraw the motion.

Leave granted.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a little difficult for me to actually acknowledge the actions of the minister in allowing further speakers, but I do thank the minister for his coopera­tion in allowing further discussion. I under­stand for the record that the minister has indicated that he is happy to allow two further speakers on this motion, and so I do thank the minister for that. It is very important that those senators who do have a view on the motion before the chair should have the opportunity to put their points of view.

Just by way of recapitulation, what we are doing is discussing a message from the House of Representatives which requests the concurrence of the Senate to a resolution to set up a joint select committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future legislation, which is to be appointed to inquire into and report on 19 bills that are listed in the motion. They all relate to the Clean Energy Bill 2011, which is a nice way of calling or labelling or titling the carbon tax bills.

This joint select committee is to look into all of those 19 bills that impose on Australians a carbon tax. Just over a year ago the leader of the Labor Party, the then Prime Minister and now current Prime Minister, promised hand on heart to all Australians that she would not introduce a carbon tax with those famous words: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' It was not a spur of the moment commitment or promise that she made. It was a commitment that she repeated a couple of times. In fact, her assurance was repeated by the deputy leader of the Labor Party, Mr Wayne Swan, when he responded to Tony Abbott, who had suggested to the Australian public that, if Labor were elected, we would have a carbon tax. Mr Abbott told the Australian public that; but Mr Swan said that Mr Abbott was being hysterical in even suggesting that the Labor Party would introduce a carbon tax. The Prime Minister at the time, Ms Gillard, promised once and then promised again the day before the election: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' Because of that assurance, and because of the fact that every member of the Labor Party was seen by the electorate to be running to the election on a policy of no carbon tax, a lot of people who would not have voted for Ms Gillard and her team changed their mind, because they believed her. If Ms Gillard had got up the day before the election and said, 'Australians, we need a carbon tax; I am going to intro­duce one', I will bet you anything—and any observer, student or person learned in poli­tics could tell you—the Labor Party would have been absolutely thrashed at the last election. But they were not thrashed—well, they were thrashed but not thrashed suffic­iently to change the government—because Ms Gillard promised there would be no carbon tax.

To make matters worse, the government then introduced 18 different bills to impose this carbon tax. Those 18 bills were dumped on the opposition's table a couple of days ago. I certainly have not had any opportunity to read even one of those bills. We all do have other work to do in this chamber. I want to spend some time reading all of those 18 bills to get an understanding of what they are about. I want to read the explanatory memorandums for all of those bills and then I want to debate those bills.

But if this proposal for so-called 'time management' passes, then I and all of my colleagues are going to have one minute per bill as the time we are allowed to debate them when they get to the Senate chamber. I understand the Green-Labor alliance has agreed upon these curtailments of speaking time when the bills come into the chamber. There is not much I can do about that. I will be voting against those proposals but I suspect the coalition of Greens and Labor will prevail on that issue.

Accepting that, I would like to have a look at these bills in committee and get some evidence from experts on each one of them. I could assess those bills much more carefully if we followed the normal Senate practice—that is, bills that are introduced into the Senate go off to a Senate committee. Under the rules of the Senate, every senator can be a participating member of those committees and I and all of my colleagues from all sides of the chamber would have the opportunity then of hearing witnesses, getting expert advice, looking at the fine details and draw­ing out the many errors that we are going to find in these bills. We know without even looking that there will be errors in these bills.

We are only too well aware of the Labor Party's record when it comes to hasty introduction of legislation and government action—just look at the pink batts fiasco. That was rushed in supposedly to fix a problem. It turned out to be one of the great­est wastes and one of the most dangerous actions taken by any government. It cost the Australian public millions and millions of dollars, not only to install these batts but also then to take them out to save houses from being burnt and to save further deaths. It is a given that there will be in these 18 bills errors, unintended consequences and issues that highlight how futile this all is. We all know the Treasury figures that show by 2020, even with this massive tax on every Australian, we are going to increase the amount of emissions coming from Australia. So it will be a big tax but the amount of emi­ssions coming from Australia will increase.

I always say, if the rest of the world were doing something then certainly Australia should be doing something, but, in spite of the protestations of the Prime Minister, we will be leading the world on a tax of this nature and extent that no other country has imposed. I remind listeners to this debate that Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of total world carbon emissions. So, even if we stopped every emission, it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the changing climate of the world—not one iota of difference. But we are not even proposing to cut the 1.4 per cent of emissions that Australia is responsible for. We are only going to cut five per cent of that.

This huge tax is all about—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

You don't like the truth of this, Senator Hanson-Young? Clearly the Greens do not want the facts to be known. Tell me, Senator Hanson-Young, is it true or not true that Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of world emissions?

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why don't you refer it to the committee?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are absolutely right. I am not going to get the chance to go to the committee. Thank you very much, Senator Hanson-Young. It should go to a committee. I should be able to raise these points at a committee. I should be able to call witnesses. I should be able, with you, to question experts on whether it is true that Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of world carbon emissions. I know what the experts will say, and it would be good if you were on the committee because you would understand from the experts that Australia only emits less than 1.4 per cent of world carbon emissions. You would also learn that stopping five per cent of that—we are aiming for five per cent—is not going to make one iota of difference to the changing climate of the world, and you know that. I would love to be in a committee with you, Senator Hanson-Young, where we could get the experts and we could get that all in. But I am not going to be given the chance. The Greens have a total of 10 members of parliament. Yet on this sole committee that is being set up to look at this legislation, the Greens will have two representatives: one from the lower house and one from the Senate. How many will the Liberal and National parties have on this committee—bearing in mind that the Liberal and National parties have more members and senators than any other party in this parliament? We have about 150 Liberal and National members of parliament and on this committee we will have three members from the House of Representatives—nomi­nated by the opposition whip—and two senators. So out of 150 parliamentarians, the Liberal and National parties will have five people on the committee. Roughly speaking, that is one per 30 members of parliament. By contrast, the Greens will have two members on the committee to represent their 10 members of parliament. How fair is that? What Australian would think that was a fair go? What Australian would think this proposal will make our democracy work?

This is a rump party, the Greens political party, that has very little support around the nation, yet this party will get two members on this committee out of its 10 members of parliament. Our parties, which represent more than 50 per cent of the Australian public, are going to get five members. When you add the Labor Party's representation to the Greens' representation on the committee, the Labor Party will get another four from the House of Representatives and two senators. There will be a total of six from the Labor Party—a non-aligned member, I see—and two from the Greens. So it is eight to five. The party that represents most Austra­lians, that has the biggest political represent­ation in this chamber and in the whole parliament, will get a total of five people on the committee.

This new committee, this gerrymander, is not going to follow the Senate practice of allowing participating members. Why is that not happening, Senator Hanson-Young? You and your Labor mates put this deal together. Why are you going against the normal Senate practice of allowing every senator to take part in committee investigations and not allowing participating members? The answer is that the Labor Party and the Greens do not want scrutiny of these bills. That is why this motion sets out that the committee will have a restricted amount of time to deal with 18 separate bills.

This committee will have a very substantial majority from the Labor-Greens alliance. Yet the opposition represents more Australians in this parliament both in numbers and in the percentage of votes at the last election. And if opinion polls are to be believed around the country, the view of Liberal and National parties is reflected in a substantial majority of Australians. Accord­ing to the opinion polls, most Australians do not want this tax, yet the Greens and the Labor Party are pursuing this undemocratic process of restricting debate on the bills. Senator Hanson-Young said, 'Save it for the debate on the bills when that comes.' Senator Hanson-Young, my allocation of time to address each one of these bills is one minute. What will I be able to say in one minute? That is my share of the time that you and your Labor colleagues have imposed on this parliament. What sort of questioning can I raise in my one minute dealing with these bills?

In all the long years I have been in this parliament, I have never seen anything as undemocratic as this particular motion and the way it intends to deal with this legisla­tion, allowing me and all my colleagues one minute per bill. Senator Hanson-Young says, 'Why don't you save this for the debate.' Senator Hanson-Young, I am a fast talker but in one minute I will not be able to question the minister, I will not be able to question anyone on your side on some of your stupidity in the case of these carbon tax bills and I will not be able to ask you: what difference will five per cent of less than 1.4 per cent make to the changing climate of the world? I would like you to answer that, Senator Hanson-Young. You will get plenty of time to talk on it, but I will get one minute per bill. How democratic is that? It is an affront to all Australians that a bill which is going to impose a major tax on the cost of living of every Australian will be rammed through this parliament by an unholy alliance, actually a holy alliance, I suspect, of the Greens and the Labor Party.

I have had to listen to the pious principles that have been espoused by the Greens Senate leader, Senator Brown, over all these years, that: 'We never guillotine anything. We may not agree with you but we allow full debate on everything.' What has happened to that principle? That has gone out the door. It just proves the point I always make about the Greens: they are full of hypocrisy. They are so hypocritical in their policies and in their approach to this issue. 'Yes, we should have a full debate.' Senator Hanson-Young inter­jected, saying, 'Save this for the debate on the bill,' yet I am going to get one minute. How democratic is that?

People have voted for the Greens in the past thinking that they were a party of the environment—what a joke that is!—and a party of some fairness and democracy. What will people in the electorate now say about a party which is going to allow every senator only one minute to debate each one of these 18 bills which will impose on every Australian perhaps the largest cost-of-living increase that has ever been imposed by this parliament?

The motion for the setting up of this committee is undemocratic. It is contrary to all the principles of the Senate. It is contrary to all the principles that every senator has always cherished. In this chamber, we have a proper committee process, we look into bills and we elucidate the mistakes that we all know will be there. That process has stood the test of time, and it is being thrown aside by the Greens political party and the Labor Party in their alliance to curtail debate on these most important bills.

I urge the Senate to reject this message from the House of Representatives. I urge the Senate to go back to its normal procedure of setting up a Senate committee, which would have every senator as a participating member, so that we can fully investigate all of these 18 different bills. (Time expired)

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are being asked to agree to a motion to appoint a joint committee to consider 18 bills that will come before this house in one cognate debate, in which each of us will have one minute per bill to speak. This motion gives us an opportunity to discuss why we need a full-blown Senate committee inquiry into these bills. This is the greatest con in the world. I can understand the Greens. I think Senator Macdonald was being a bit harsh on the Greens. The Greens have been very, very successful with this. They have been totally successful. Why are we rushing? Because Senator Bob Brown wants to go to South Africa and swan around and say, 'This is what I got.' That will increase the Greens vote—no doubt about it. So they have been terribly successful.

The most unsuccessful people in this parliament are the Labor Party. They are lining up like a bunch of lemmings to go over a cliff. It amazes me. It is almost as though it is fatalistic: 'We're going to die. Let's do it. Let's do it together.' Everyone in the Labor Party knows that at least 20 or 30 of them are going to be collateral damage. But the Greens have told them to charge: 'Go into it. We've blown the whistle. Go over the top.' And, like lemmings, they are going over the top, and they are going to get completely wiped out. But they cannot see it. They cannot see that they are being led around by the nose by the Greens. The people out there see it. They see the Greens now as anti-Semitic. They see the Greens as supporting the boycott of chocolate shops. Even the Greens vote is going down. But when the Greens vote goes down it is two per cent off the Labor vote also. I warned Labor when they were at 34 per cent. I said, 'Disengage yourself from the Greens or you will bottom out at 25 per cent.' Well, they have bottomed out at 25 per cent. They are at 27 per cent now, but the Greens have lost two per cent and that takes them to 25 per cent. They have bottomed out.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Senator, you should be very proud of yourself. You have led these people into a perfect trap, an unbelievable trap. The surprising thing is that they are too stupid to see it. But they know that, come the election, there is going to be an execution. Twenty or 30 of them are going to be collateral damage. We know it. The polls are telling us. The people are telling us. I have not seen Labor on the nose so badly since 1974. People distrust the Labor Party because they have been misled and they have been lied to.

But let us get back to the debate. There are three totally good reasons that this is an absolute con and cannot work. First, if a carbon tax is going to work it has got to be imposed on the whole world. It is no good Australia, with 1.4 per cent, pulling its weight or doing more than its share. It is not going to make the slightest bit of difference. You have got to go out and convince the people in the Third World countries—the big emitters, the people that are trying to make a quid, the governments that are trying to pull their people out of poverty—that they should pay an increased price on their handful of rice, on their cooking oil, on their electricity, on the steel they use, on the cement they use. You have got to convince the people of Indonesia, the Philippines, India. And do you think they are going to listen to you? Those countries have not got the slightest intention of leaving their people in poverty, and neither should they. For this to work, you have got to convince them. So this fails on the first attempt. You will never convince the people in the Third World—and you should never be able to convince them—that they have got to starve, live in inferior houses and not have any industry because nine of you over there want to take the Labor Party around by the nose.

The second reason it will not work is that it is based on a lie. This modelling is a lie. It is based on the assumption that every country in the world is going to achieve this by 2016. You do not have to believe me, but a guy called McKibbin, who is one of the leading economists in Australia, has said that there is absolutely no modelling that the government is prepared to release. A person called Henry Ergas says in an article:

Answering these questions would be easier if the government opened the kimono on the actual model. Given access to the model itself, we would know exactly what it assumes. And the implications of changing those assumptions could be tested.

The government will not release its model. The other day in a Senate Committee on Climate Policy hearing I asked Ms Quinn whether anybody could buy this modelling. She said yes. I asked if someone was to rock up with a cheque in their hand, could they buy the modelling. Someone was listening to me at the time, and he went with a cheque in his hand wanting to buy the modelling. He was refused the modelling. So the modelling is not there. There are reams and reams of paper but the official modelling is not avail­able. That is another case of misleading the parliament, of misleading the people. This carbon tax is based on an assumption that the rest of the world is going to comply by 2016. That is not going to happen, and everyone in Australia knows it is not going to happen.

The third reason is China. In 2021 China will replace Australia's projected emissions reduction—57 million tonnes—in just one day and Australia's projected emissions sav­ings, including purchase of international permits, in less than four days. I remind the Senate that China's consumption of coal grew by 15 per cent in 2010. It went to 435 million tonnes. Australia only produces 420 million tonnes. So the total production of Australia's coal, which is a major export, would go over to China.

Reducing carbon emissions has to be app­roached on a world basis. People out there are not stupid. If you could turn up and say 'I can assure you that this will work', you might get a bit of bite out there in the electorate. But you are not getting that. People would probably listen to you if you could prove that it would work. But there are three reasons it will not work. Firstly, you will not ever convince Third World countries that they can do it—they cannot do it. They are trying to pull their people out of poverty while the Greens sit over there on their parliamentary salaries and try to keep the Third World in poverty. That is what they are trying to do. The second reason it will not work is that it is based on an assumption that everyone else in the world will be working off the same plan in 2016. The third reason it will not work is that China is upping and upping its use of coal—and it is cutting down wind generation, because it is inefficient. That is an issue for another time.

We need time to investigate these facts that I have raised. They are facts supported by prominent modellers and economists—but they cannot get the government's model­ling. I asked about the modelling and was told that people could get it, but when some­one rocked up with a cheque they were told they could not get it. The Labor Party is supposed to represent workers, and it knows it is going to destroy jobs, so why is it going ahead with the legislation? Because the Greens want it. Senator Macdonald was a bit harsh on the Greens. The Greens have played the Labor Party off a break. The stupid part about it is that the Labor Party does not even know it is getting played off a break. The leader of the Greens will go over to Durban and he will prance around on the world stage and say, 'Hey, look what I have done'. If he was really honest he would say, 'Look what I have done—I have confined the Third World to poverty; I have made sure they are not going to get out of poverty'. That is, effect­ively, what the Greens want. They want Aboriginals to stay in poverty; they do not want them to use their own land and they do not want them to work in the cement indus­try or in an industry on Stradbroke Island. They want to close it all down and keep people in poverty. If that is what the Greens want to do, and that is where their market is, good on them. But I fail to understand why the Labor Party just meekly follows the Greens down this path to destruction.

I want to illustrate one case, speaking on behalf of the National Party and the coa­lition. Some of the biggest employers in rural Australia are abattoirs. They employ huge numbers of people. You can roughly equate the number of cattle killed per day with the number of people employed in abattoirs. This tax is going to cost abattoirs between $2.5 million and $3.5 million. That is a big variation; they are still working on the figure—but it is certainly $2.5 million and probably higher. These abattoirs are the iron lungs of country Australia. They employ the people who live in the towns and then there are teachers in the towns, and so it goes on. The abattoir I have in mind is a huge employer, and it sustains the town. A carbon tax placed on the abattoir will affect the town. What will happen to these 600 work­ers? According to the Greens: 'It'll be right. Just pass your costs on.' But this particular abattoir is competing overseas against count­ries which do not have a carbon tax. Our companies will have to sell meat, with a high dollar and no carbon tax, while competing against others who have no carbon tax. They are terrified.

There are implications not only for abattoirs. If you take an abattoir out of the buying ring, it affects the price with the pressure pushing up the price of cattle. The other day probably the second last tannery in Australia rang my office. This guy said to me, 'I will need a miracle to survive. I'm doing it hard now but I cannot see how I will survive when a carbon tax comes.' There are another 200 process workers at this tannery, people who would probably find it hard to get a job anywhere else. The implications from that are not only for the 200 people. This particular tannery works on kangaroo leather—it makes cricket balls and footballs. I am glad you think it is funny, Senator Ludwig. It is about as funny as you closing down the cattle industry in North Queens­land. I hope you get a laugh when you find everyone going broke because of your ill-considered—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Could you kindly address your remarks to the chair, Senator Boswell. Senator Boswell, the hum­orous issue was about something other than what you were talking about, quite frankly, but I do not think I need to make that personal explanation. It would be better if you kept to the debate at hand rather than wander, as you seem apt to do, across a whole range of areas.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Boswell, I want to remind you that we are debating the motion moved by Senator Ludwig in reference to a message from the House of Representatives.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the minister was showing amusement about something else, I do apologise. We have in front of us a mental picture of closure of abattoirs and tanneries, where process workers are to be put on the dole. So you cannot blame me, if I see someone on the other side smiling, for getting upset about it. If Senator Ludwig tells me he was amused by some other issue, I accept that and I apologise.

In 2050, we are going to be sending $57 billion offshore to buy certificates. What are we going to get for it? Nothing—we are going to get some certificates back. We cannot even run renewable energy. There are so many scams happening now on renewable energy. What do you think is going to happen when we have to buy certificates from Western African countries? Do you think they are going to be fair dinkum? What are we going to buy? Even Norway, a fairly sophisticated country, is at the moment in the middle of a huge scam on emissions trading certificates.

This is designed to fail. The tragedy will be that in failing it will destroy a lot of manufacturing jobs in Australia—in the tanneries, in the abattoirs, in rural Australia and in Golden Circle right in the heart of Mr Swan's area. People will be able to buy imported pineapple from Thailand or wher­ever they bring it in from. But the great Golden Circle company will have to pay a carbon tax. Already it is under pressure and shedding jobs. Already imports are coming in because of a high dollar. All these things are happening now and they are happening right in front of us.

What is the Labor Party's answer to manu­facturing? 'Don't worry about any of that. We'll get Peter Beattie. We'll pay him a thousand bucks a day and he will fix it all.' If that is not shades of GroceryWatch, Fuel­watch or 'Peter Beattie watch', I do not know what is. It is a shame and a nonsense. You will not address the issue because you will not stand up to the Greens. We saw it yesterday. You would not support a resolu­tion condemning the Greens because they are your partners. You are handcuffed to them and they are leading you around and playing you all for fools. I do not know when you will wake up. Sometimes I do not think you will ever wake up, but one day, when there is an election—and that election could come any time between now and in two years—there will be a severe reckoning with the Labor Party.

We need a meaningful Senate or House of Representatives inquiry to investigate these 19 bills. There are going to be mistakes—there always are mistakes and unintended consequences. We are going to spend the next 12 months trying to sort them out through amendments because we have to get there before Senator Bob Brown goes to Durban. This is another example—if we needed further examples because we get them every day of the week—of the Greens telling the Labor Party what to do. The people have had a gutful of it. You should stand up and get a bit of courage. You should stand on your own feet!

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are now debating, notwithstanding the submissions that have gone before, the establishment of a Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Clean Energy Future Legislation. This has already passed through the House of Representa­tives, where a majority saw the need for the establishment of the joint select committee. Now it is in the Senate for concurrence.

Carbon pricing and climate change policy have been widely debated in Australia for more than a decade, including through some 35 parliamentary inquiries. This joint com­mittee will be the 36th. In 1998, the first review of emissions trading was conducted by an Australian government. Work under­taken by the then Howard government, most notably by Professor Peter Shergold, conclu­ded that pricing carbon through a market based mechanism was the best approach to tackling climate change. Professor Ross Garnaut has conducted two major reviews on Australia's best policy options for tackling climate change. But there is more. The Multi-Party Climate Change Committee met for nine months before completing its work in July this year. That is how the govern­ment's Clean Energy Future package was developed. This just gives you a frame of reference for when those opposite complain about their inability to participate in the debate.

What we have heard from those opposite has a tinge of hypocrisy, I think. On the one hand, they complain that they will not have the ability to participate; on the other hand, they do not want us to act. It is the latter which is, I believe, the real motivation be­hind the complaints from the other side. The federal coalition, the Greens and Independ­ents were all invited to participate in the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. Guess what? Only the coalition declined the opportunity to participate in the development of this fundamental public policy reform. They could have been part of that; they could have participated in that. But they chose not to. So I do think the debate this morning is tinged with a little hypocrisy from those opposite.

The government has engaged widely, including through business and NGO round­tables, as part of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee process. The government released the framework for its carbon pricing policy and sought feedback. Draft legislation was released for consultation in late July and over 1,300 submissions were received. Every single committee established by the former coalition government, without exception, had a government majority. In contrast, this government is not seeking to have a govern­ment majority on this committee. That is indicative of the inclusive approach we have taken. The government has been open, trans­parent and consultative throughout this process. We have shared with the Australian community all the available research which has informed our thinking.

It is now time to get on with business, to establish the joint select committee, to progress the legislation, to progress towards a clean energy future. Labor's plan will cut carbon pollution and drive investment in clean energy technologies and infrastruct­ure—in solar, gas and wind. It will help build the clean energy future which future generations deserve. It will not help us that the opposition remain, effectively, climate change sceptics. The rest of the world is acting and we need to act with them.

I was not going to take up too much time in this debate, but I think one of the things I do need to do is dispel this position that the opposition bring to the parliament. There is an old equity proverb: 'You should come with clean hands if you are going to whinge about the process.' Let us look at the opposition's record on process. I take this from an essay entitled, The Senate a paper tiger?, where Labor Senator Chris Evans is quoted summarising the impact of the coalition's strategies on the passage of legislation through the Senate between 1 July 2005 and 16 December 2005. During that period, the gag was used 16 times, thus redu­cing the time available for critical scrutiny of government business by the opposition and the minor parties. The guillotine was applied and the gag was used three times on the Telstra bills and Family First Senator Steve Fielding was denied the opportunity to speak. On 11 October 2005, debate over a variation to the routine of business and sit­ting hours was gagged twice. On 3 Novem­ber 2005, debate was gagged on a motion relating to hours and routine of business. On 8 November, the gag was used over Labor's proposed amendment to the reference of the Senate Education, Employment and Work­place Relations Committee's inquiry into the provisions of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005. On 1 December, Work Choices legislation was guillotined and debate gagged. On 5 December, antiterror bills and two welfare bills were guillotined and gagged.

There is an old equity proverb to the effect that if you want to come and have this debate, you should come with clean hands. Clearly you do not have clean hands in this debate. We have come to this debate with clean hands. We have ensured that there has been a consultative process. We asked you to participate in a multi-party climate change committee, but you refused. You will continue, as you have outlined, to just simply say no, to take a negative, carping approach and to argue neither the policy nor the sub­stance of the debate—you will continue to use process to just simply say no. Those on this side of the chamber are getting on with business. We are looking forward to a clean energy future. We would like to have a good policy debate on this, but I do not hold up a lot of hope for it, quite frankly. Question put:

That the motion (Senator Ludwig's) be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [12:18]

(The President—Senator Hogg)

Senator Wong did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan

Question agreed to.