Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sometimes when the opposition moves motions in the take note of answers debate, one could be excused for thinking we have shifted over to Alice in Wonderland mode because not one item of sense or truth has yet been put in this entire debate. Senator Humphries took a long time to establish the fact that modelling was not clear or it has not been received in an adequate manner, that there had not been sufficient days set aside for a committee of inquiry, that only six days was going to be given and that the Senate cannot be asked to give consideration to a package of bills in a careful considered manner absent a proper inquiry. Let us establish on the record what the facts are in the debate around the government's clean energy legislation. A package of 18 or 19 bills was circulated in early July to the wider community. Some 300 written submissions were received over the next month that identified issues, shortcomings, deficiencies and matters of interpretation. The government received those submissions, put them in context and circulated a revised package of bills which has now been introduced into both houses of parliament.

Not only have they introduced the revised legislation; they—or the government and the opposition—established a joint committee that is not a narrow committee but a committee comprising members and senators from all parties who have people elected to both houses. That committee is going to sit for some six, seven or eight days. It will, as is the case with all committees, receive submissions. It will sit in public during the day and during the night. It will have the benefit of expert evidence. It will receive material from a range of witnesses. All of the public servants who have been involved in the policy determinations behind the government's position will be available for questioning and scrutiny. Legal counsel will be there to aid the committee in the interpretation of particular pieces of legislation.

That full, detailed and more than adequate scrutiny of an important set of bills is not the only thing that has occurred. For the record, that will be the 18th parliamentary committee of inquiry into various aspects of carbon price legislation, carbon pricing or clean energy legislation. This issue has been around the circus for the last three or four years. So let us not suggest that there has not been a wealth of public discussion. Let us not suggest that every possible argument, in whatever form, has not been put and considered by both the proponents and the opponents of a carbon pricing scheme. It has been out there for the last three or four years. It has been examined and discussed.

People are certainly aware of the government's position. The government's position has been crystal clear. The Prime Minister announced it earlier this year. On behalf of the government, she said that the government would introduce clean energy legislation. We proceeded to establish a multi-party climate change committee to do the preparatory investigatory work on the government's announced policy. We invited Independent members of parliament to participate in that multi-party committee on climate change. We invited minor party representatives from the Greens to participate in that inquiry. And we invited the second major set of parties in this parliament to participate, the Liberal Party and the National Party, and they refused to participate. They refused to bring any considered position at all to the deliberations of that Multi-Party Climate Change Committee.

What did that committee do? It sat for nine months. It had access to verbal and written submission from a wide range of interested stakeholders who wanted to say something about the government's proposition for clean energy legislation. It did not matter if you were an industry group, a producer group, a rural group, a group from regional Australia, a group that was opposed or a group that was in favour. Every group, every set of witnesses, that put in a submission and asked to come to that Multi-Party Climate Change Committee received an invitation to attend and to give their evidence and was the subject of examination by all of the members of the committee who participated. (Time expired)