Senator BOLKUS (4:04 PM) —While someone gives Senator Brown a copy of the message, and I would like to have one as well, could I indicate that the opposition will not be supporting that part of the message which asks the Senate to agree with the House when it says it does not agree with some of our amendments. Some of these amendments are manner and form, in a sense. They do not raise major issues of principle, and I think what we have got here is a knee-jerk reaction by a minister who is not prepared to accept that others may have a different view to him, by a minister who was probably suffering jet lag when he made a decision in respect of some of these amendments, and by a minister whose senior minister, in the true sense of the word in this portfolio, is Senator Minchin.

We actually moved amendments here in a quite reasonable way and had them debated. Quite a number of issues were thrown up during the Senate deliberations on this bill. Very substantive issues and very important matters were raised and the opposition took the view, as did the minor parties, that there were some amendments that were necessary and some which we would ensure an ongoing scrutiny of to ensure that unforeseen consequences did not take place, and we would come back at a later date to address those issues. In other words, we did not accept everything that was put up through the deliberative process of the Senate, but we in the opposition were quite selective about the items that we supported. I am sure Senator Brown and Senator Allison would say the same thing about the Greens and the Democrats.

We are now in a situation where the government has said, `It does not matter that you have had a committee process, that the bill has been looked at, and that there has been a large number of submissions. It does not matter that people have identified problems with the legislation; we will not listen to them. We will not listen to anyone who disagrees with us.' As I said, the government has said they are not prepared to accept the most simple of amendments.

If you look at amendments Nos 1 and 2, for example, which the House disagrees with, amendment No. 1 is an Australian Greens amendment which gave some meaning to the objects clause of the legislation. What was that meaning? The objects of this act are deemed to be, by the amendment passed by the Senate:

How often has the government said that that is the objective of the act? The minister has put out press statement after press statement, not only in Australia. I am sure that when he goes to The Hague in just a few weeks time he will tell the rest of the world that this is the great objective of this legislation. We will tell the rest of the world that it is an objective that the government has told the Australian parliament not to share, not to agree to. Subclause (b) says `to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases'. What is the purpose of this legislation? This is legislation announced at the greenhouse conference at Kyoto by the minister in order to demonstrate to the world—

Senator Hill —It was announced by the Prime Minister before Kyoto.

Senator BOLKUS —It was announced by the Prime Minister before Kyoto, telling them that the Australian government was serious about greenhouse emissions and that the Australian government was going to do something about it. So much for the Prime Minister's word. As the minister now says, the Prime Minister made that commitment, but it is a commitment that the cabinet is not prepared to agree with. Has the minister lost control of his portfolio or has the Prime Minister lost control of his senses and his commitment? Go back to The Hague, Senator Hill, and we will tell them that the promise made by the Prime Minister at Kyoto on the reduction of greenhouse gases is something that he no longer believes in, because he will not allow it to be placed in the legislation.

Subclause (c) says, `To ensure that renewable energy sources are ecologically sustainable.' Once again, you could go through the government's Internet site and find press statement after press statement. You can come into this place and you can hear statement after statement by the minister saying that these three objects are the objects of the act. Why not accept them as the objects of the act? Because the government says in its official explanation that this clause, these amendments Nos 1 and 2—and I must say that amendment No. 2 is, once again, a Greens amendment that gives definition to `ecological sustainability'; a definition which appears not only in this government's documentation but in that of the previous Labor government—substantially alter the approval processes for renewable energy generation projects seeking to be eligible under the measure. Someone must have put that excuse in the wrong box. Someone must have ticked that off, and that someone must have been suffering jet lag at the time. In the schedule it says:

The difficulty that the draftspeople have found in respect of amendments (1) and (2) is probably in understanding the purport of them. They say:

The purpose of the legislation for an international constituency is that, by supporting the expansion of renewable energy generation capacity in Australia, they would be having an impact on the level of greenhouse gases emitted in Australia. We can go on through the amendments. The Senate accepted an amendment to define what is an eligible renewable energy source. It listed, (a) to (r), a number of sources. That list is not anything radical; it is nothing novel; it is nothing irregular. It is a list on which you will find, if you go through this minister's statements, at one time or another, if not on one occasion, all these aspects listed as renewable energy sources.

But we do not say this is an exhaustive list. We made it very clear in debate that this is a list of some instances. What is not an eligible renewable energy resource is listed in subclause (2), `Fossil fuels and waste products derived from fossil fuels'. When we discussed that aspect of it, Senator Campbell, representing the minister, said, `There's no need for that because it's already in other parts of the legislation.' But we are now told these sorts of amendments are out of order because they run counter to the objectives of the legislation. Then we go to subclause (3), which says that `the regulations may prescribe any matter necessary or convenient to give effect to this section'. This is a clause that allows the government to add other eligible renewable energy sources.

The register of applications is something that we debated the other day. Indexation is a critical issue and I turn to opposition amendment No. 22. The Senate decided that, unless the charge was indexed, it would lose value and as a consequence lose impact. As a consequence of that, the sorts of renewable energy sources this legislation is claiming to be able to bring about will not happen. We have had the figures provided to us in relation to the need for indexation. Over 10 years, if this measure is not indexed, it would be worth about half the value it is now. Let us accept that the value of the charge at the moment is not one that gives people enormous confidence that it will achieve much by way of an alternative renewable energy industry. There are concerns as to whether it is sufficient to drive the outcome. But if you do not adjust it to the CPI, over that immediate period you will have the value of that penalty basically being valueless. If you increase it in accordance with CPI, the value will be maintained and you will have a better opportunity of actually achieving the sorts of outcomes the government says it wants to achieve. The $40 declines to $30 by 2010. If, however, it is CPI adjusted, it will have a value of $53.29. So, in essence, it is going to be valued either at $53.29 in 2010 or at $30, if you do not have that CPI adjustment.

We think that amendment is quite critical to the ongoing success of any scheme that comes out under this legislation. We also believe that it is an adjustment that the Australian Greenhouse Office thinks is important and one that the minister himself thinks is important. Essentially I am saying two things: (1) reasonable amendments after considered discussion and debate with a lot of public input have been rejected by the government on the one hand; (2) in their rejection they have not even come up with any reasonable options to reject the clauses adopted by the Senate. So we will be insisting that the amendments that the House of Representatives does not agree with be agreed to.

Motion (by Senator Hill) proposed: