Page 4998 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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apparent. When the budget comes down, usually on the first Tuesday in May, it is not clear to all of the members of this place, let alone all of the members of the community, what the implications of that will be in particular areas and what are the hidden nasties. And there are always hidden nasties in the budget; it does not matter what side of government produces them.
What Mr Seselja’s amendment does is create a clear point of transparency. “This is an initiative which has been brought about by the passage of this climate change legislation; this is what it will cost, and this is how it will impact on the community”—that is what Mr Seselja’s amendment calls for and that is why we will really strongly support that level of transparency. The people of the ACT deserve to know how much this will cost and they deserve to be part of the ongoing conversation about how we will implement this very expensive policy.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.17): I just want to pick up on the last few comments Mrs Dunne was making. I do agree with her that the Canberra community does need to know and debate what the costs of this are going to be. My observation here is simply that I do not think this is the appropriate place in this legislation to insert this point. I note that Mr Seselja will be moving a number of amendments in which he seeks to address the issue of costs throughout the legislation, and we will debate each of those as we come to them, but this is simply not the place; this is a place about policy directions, about government intentions.
Mr Corbell makes a good point that, given that the requirement here is for the minister to report within six sitting days of the ICRC report, any cost-benefit analysis would lack credibility because there simply would not be the time frame to prepare it with the kind of substance that, frankly, we would want to see in this place.
You will note that I just used the words “cost-benefit analysis”. I am struck by the fact that all of these amendments that have been put forward by Mr Seselja, if I remember correctly, talk only about the costs. There is never—never—any reference to benefits. I find it amazing that, in even raising this issue, the Liberal Party are talking only about the costs and show no interest in having an assessment of the benefits. There will be benefits. I have spoken of this before, and this is the underlying flaw in this argument. They have no understanding of the costs of climate change. There are costs of climate change as well; there are costs in taking action to ameliorate climate change, to seek to mitigate climate change, but there are also costs of climate change. And there are also benefits; there are opportunities in the changes that we will make.
The fact that there seems to be no interest in moving away from the dirty fuel economy and moving to a clean, greener economy is of concern. I do not know if this demonstrates bias on the issue and an underlying issue on the ideology of climate change or something else. But if we are going to have a serious debate about costs, we need to have a debate about costs and benefits—not just the costs. We do need to be mindful of costs.
Just because the Liberal Party stands up here and says that the Greens and the government do not care about the costs does not make it true. In our commentary we have been absolutely explicit that we must be mindful of the costs, particularly for
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