Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (October 31st, 17:04):

I rise to add my condolences to those of my colleagues on all sides of the chamber concerning the horror that occurred on the weekend and to pay my respects to the three fallen Australians whose sacrifice is appreciated by all of us. Also to the Afghan interpreter, who was killed, and the many who were terribly injured, our thoughts are with them and their families. It is worth noting in passing, with a sense of sadness, that we do not speak to the names of each of Australia's fallen troops now because there are so many. We stand in silence in acknowledgement of their sacrifice but simply do not have time as a parliament to speak to them all as we used to-32 in a decade and a third of them fallen in only the last 12 months. If there has been such progress, if things look as wonderful on the ground as Senator Feeney has been describing, it appears that the violence that our troops have been exposed to is only getting worse.

More than 2,700 coalition dead has been the cost in lives of this war, and an uncounted number of Afghan civilian deaths. If this parliament stood in silence momentarily and acknowledged the civilian loss of life in Afghanistan, we would not have time to conduct any business at all. The estimate over the last four years is that nearly 9,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the conflict, with civilian deaths increasing each year. It is these profoundly disturbing numbers of civilian deaths that I think give the lie to the picture that is being painted that we are in this struggle for the long haul, that all we need to do is stay the course and eventually there will be some kind of happy ending, and that we will be able to depart the country with some form of democracy in place.

Tell the truth. Tell the Australian people the truth. Why is it so difficult to even have these issues debated in the Australian parliament? We would not have even had a mature debate in this parliament if Senator Brown had not got that into the agreement with the Gillard government last August. Tell the truth as to why after a decade in this quagmire there is now the strongest opposition to this war by the Australian people. A recent Essential Media poll showed that 64 per cent of Australians think that troops should withdraw-that is up from 56 per cent this March and just under half about this time last year. This is now a profoundly unpopular war.

It is justified, as we heard to some degree from some of the previous speakers, that this has been a great cause for the emancipation of women. A June 2011 Trust Law report by the Thomas Reuters Foundation found that violence, dismal health care and brutal poverty make Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country for women. After a 10-year occupation, Afghanistan has emerged as the most dangerous country for women overall and the worst in three of the six risk categories-health, non-sexual violence and lack of access to economic resources. So tell us the truth, government spokespeople and opposition spokespeople, who stand up in here and tell us that things will be fine if we simply toe the line. What if that is not true? German General Kujat told the German Daily in July 2011:

The mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with United States, but if you measure progress against the goal of stabilising a country and a region, then the mission has failed.
There has been no such honesty from Australian policymakers. We catch a glimpse, of course, of how this war is really seen in the higher levels of the United States government-again thanks to the huge release of US State Department diplomatic cables by the audacious organisation WikiLeaks. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who served in Afghanistan as a three-star general, at the end of a 9 October cable marked 'confidential' said:

One of our major challenges in Afghanistan is how to fight corruption and connect people to the government, and their key government officials are themselves corrupt.

In another cable, quoted in Bob Woodward's book on the war behind the scenes, Obama's War, Eikenberry said:

Right now we're dealing with an extraordinarily corrupt government.

These are our partners. That underscores the tragedy of the events we saw over the weekend. Senator Faulkner says that we are there at the invitation of the Afghan government; we are there at the invitation of the government of the United States. Let us be absolutely clear about why we are there. This is the only time in its history that the ANZUS Treaty has been invoked. Prime Minister Howard, without recourse to parliament, put us into that war, took us directly into that conflict. That, I think, tells us more than anything else.

The debate in Australia is bland, uninformative and superficial compared with the depth of the debate which has occurred in the many other countries Senator Milne outlined whose troops have been withdrawn. The debate has been had, the facts were put on the table, a deadline was set and then the troops were drawn down. There has been no such debate here in parliament. There has been this strange, shallow, bipartisan willingness to tug the forelock and carry on. And not a single parliamentarian in this place, unless you happen to have a seat in cabinet, has the ability to do anything about it because this parliament has never granted itself the so-called 'war power', the ability to sign off on troop deployments and then to call them home. These are not military decisions; these are deeply diplomatic and political decisions which, as parliamentarians, the people who come into this chamber to discuss the matter have absolutely no power to do anything about. Senator Faulkner, as a former serving defence minister, attended funerals and told this very chamber of the tragic and gruesome updates of the conflict he had tried to manage.

This matter has been reserved for the executive. There is still this stale, bipartisan consensus, unlike ourpartner countries and most other countries which we consider to be our peers, where that power has been devolved from the executive to at least give some say to the parliament-including Westminster and the United States congress, but no such luck here in Australia. So parliamentarians will file in here and express ongoing confidence and support for the war knowing full well that, even if they disagree, there would be absolutely nothing they could do about it.

We can come in here and conduct a debate, trying to put the facts on the table, but in fact it is the Prime Minister's call. We saw that most tragically-even more tragically than the incident we are debating now-in the war in Iraq, where the executive, premised on a lie and against the will of the vast majority of Australian people and arguably against international legal opinion, took us to war in Iraq, which resulted in enormous civilian, military and resource costs.

So when will the debate finally come to parliament? We can sit down now, having had a say, perhaps feeling a little better that we have got a few things off our chests and expressed our support for the people we have put in harm's way, but what can we actually do about it in this parliament? It is time the debate in Australia got some maturity about it. Let us hear from the people who have served on the front line, but let us also hear from the Afghan people. People in here claim that we are wanted there, that we are there at the invitation of the Afghan government. Afghanistan is being run somewhere on the spectrum between a barely functioning new democracy and an organised crime syndicate. These are the people we have signed up to as our partners in Afghanistan. We owe it to the people we have put in harm's way not to wait for a quiet patch when the attention has gone away, with full respect to the people who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, and to ask the questions: why are we there, do we need to be there, how long are we planning on being there, what are the conditions we would call a success and at what point will we say that our work there is done?

In the piece quoted by Senator Milne, it is understood that perhaps within months of a withdrawal-this is from one of the people Professor Hugh White quotes-it may well be that the corrupt government which is being propped up at the moment would not last a matter of months. At what point do we think it would last? When will it be on its feet? Do we need to be there for another decade? These questions need to be asked and they are simply not being asked because of the stale, bipartisan consensus that we will soldier on until the United States government tells us we can go. Surely we can do better than that.

Great excitement! Last night the House of Representatives passed my private member’s bill to remove federal ministerial veto power over Territory laws*.

It is the first Australian Greens bill ever to pass Parliament and become law.

No longer will a single federal minister be able to step in and --with the stroke of a pen and without reference to Parliament -- dismiss laws passed by the democratically elected representatives of the Territory Assemblies (as the Howard government did when it overrode the civil partnerships laws passed by the ACT Assembly five years ago).

This bill has passed thanks to you and the 1.6 million Australians who voted Greens last election and thanks to the support of the Chief Ministers of the Territories, the Gillard government and the Independents, and the four Greens elected to represent Canberrans in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

It is a great day for the Australian Greens and great day for democracy! Raise a glass!

If you are near Canberra next Tuesday, please come to the Senate to see the historic carbon price package pass into law. Click here to rsvp or for details to watch online.

* Territories Self-Government Legislation Amendment (Disallowance and Amendment of laws) Bill 2011

Today we celebrate a huge achievement, with the passage of the Clean Energy Future legislation that finally puts a price on pollution and gets us ready for historical investments in clean, renewable energy, energy efficiency and protection of landscape carbon.

But, in a very real way, today's vote is a new beginning for the campaign for serious climate action, not the end.

This package of bills was designed carefully to have as many points of review as possible, as many opportunities for campaigning as possible, and as much independent expert advice as possible. Critically, it is designed with complete upward flexibility: there is no limit to our ambition if we are ready to aim high.

The challenge now is to build the political will for ambitious, science-based action over the years ahead.

The single most important innovation in the Clean Energy Future package is the process for setting targets for the emissions trading scheme that starts in 2015. Inspired by the British system, we will have five year rolling carbon budgets, updated each year for the following five year period. Annual targets for the trading scheme will be set within those budgets.

The carbon budgets, which will have to pass through the parliament, will be recommended by an independent expert panel, the Climate Change Authority. In the UK, it has already proven too hard for the government of the day to disregard the recommendations of their Climate Commission - a key factor in the UK's world-leading position on legislated pollution targets. The Authority will have regard to but not be bound by the new 80% by 2050 emissions reduction target. It will undertake extensive public consultation and look in detail at current science, current global efforts and the local economy when determining what budgets it will recommend for the following five year budget each February. The parliament will have to act on those recommendations by the federal budget each year, marking out a critical period for climate campaigning.

This means that, each and every year from 2014 on, we will have the opportunity to lift our sights to greater ambition, to bring our targets closer into line with the science.

That brings us the first key challenge. As world-renowned climate scientist, Professor John Schellnhuber, who was here in Australia recently, said: "If political reality is not grounded in physical reality, it is useless". In order to create the space for the climate change authority to do its job, we have to embark on a major campaign to rebuild respect for the science and broad public acknowledgement of the scale of the problem we face in attempting to keep global warming to less than 1.5 -2C.

And, of course, making the best possible appointments to the Authority will also be critical.

That brings me to the next critical area where what we are legislating today is only a start - driving the transformation to 100% renewable energy.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation [CEFC] and Australian Renewable Energy Agency [ARENA] have the potential to dramatically re-shape the investment environment for renewable energy in this country. If they are to be as effective as they possibly can be, the renewable energy industry and those who want to see it grow as fast as it can have a very small window of opportunity to help shape the CEFC's investment mandate and make suggestions for who should be on the boards of both independent statutory authorities. We need to get these right and get them moving to give big solar and all the other technologies the market signal they need to start building.

At the same time, I have every hope that the initiatives we have instigated - from requiring the Australian Energy Market Operator to prepare scenario planning for 100% renewables to tasking the Ministerial Council on Energy with examining long overdue energy market reform to prioritise demand side management alongside supply side - will make bureaucrats and politicians alike sit up and think about the way our energy grid and markets work. We all need to support this process by gathering evidence and examples of how energy markets operate here and elsewhere in the world to stimulate innovation rather than stifle it, and bring it to the table here.

On that issue of driving the energy revolution and the opportunity to move to 100% renewables, I am determined to focus political attention next year on the grid infrastructure. The grid has been overlooked for too long in our debate. It clearly isn't a sexy topic, but everybody knows that, if we plan in the national interest, make the right investment decisions now and put the right management policies in place, we will make the transition to renewable energy and energy efficiency easier, faster and less expensive.

Another major area of focus for the Greens next year will be the intersection between the food, water, energy and climate crises - namely, food security. We need to maximise food production and export by lifting agricultural productivity in the face of escalating climate change and oil depletion. Competition for land and water between agriculture, coal seam gas, carbon storage, urbanisation and land grabs from foreign governments must be resolved. The carbon farming initiative and the biodiversity fund have been designed in such a way that they can guide decisions on land use and encourage decisions that will benefit the climate, our biodiversity and our farmers, indigenous communities and other land managers. Again, appointments to the board will be critical, as will be public work to create the space for that board to do its job.

There is a myriad of reviews that have been negotiated through this agreement, such as the Productivity Commission's ongoing analysis of the compensation package to polluting industry. We all need to be gathering evidence, participating in and scrutinising these reviews to get the best possible results from them.

All told, the package we are legislating today is a very big first step. Where the old CPRS that we rejected was a full stop at the end of the campaign to tackle climate change, this package is an opening paragraph. We have a lot of work to do in the months and years ahead to make the best use of the opportunities we have created.

Only then will the story we have started to write today truly become the transformative narrative that underpins our future.

The "year of decision and delivery" is quickly coming to an end and the Prime Minister is determined to get the government's mining tax passed through the House of Representative this week before the summer break of Parliament. The Senate would then deal with the legislation when Parliament resumes in 2012.

In this desperation, in the PM's own words "to get the job done", the mining tax proposed by the government has been watered down to appease the mining barons. Australians will rightly be disappointed that the government's proposal is not snaring a fairer share of the biggest economic boom in the country's history. For that you can thank the ALP's power brokers. When Kevin Rudd was prime minister, he and Treasurer Wayne Swan cherry-picked some of the more than 100 recommendations of the Henry review with which they agreed into the taxation system, and ignored the others.

Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry suggested a "uniform resource rent tax should be set at a rate of 40 per cent". He pointed out that Australia leads the world with its reserves of "brown coal, lead, mineral sands (rutile and zircon), nickel, silver, uranium and zinc, and the second largest reserves of bauxite, copper, gold and iron ore (contained iron)".

We know what happened. The mining industry funded a multimillion-dollar advertising and lobbying campaign using influential media voices that ultimately cost Rudd his prime ministership and scrapped the super profits tax.

Instead of the 40 per cent tax applying to all mining companies and all of Australia's mineral wealth, Labor's proposal is now effectively a 22.5 per cent tax and covers only coal and iron ore projects.

The revised tax was negotiated between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and three mining behemoths, which gave it their blessing. Of course they did - they're paying less tax than Treasury's original proposal, and it includes fewer projects. In fact, the deal cut with the big mining companies will cost Australian taxpayers $100 billion over 10 years of forgone revenue - big money at a time when the government is mooting service and funding cuts to keep the budget in surplus.

The mining rent tax has already been diluted too far and means Australians are missing out on a better share of the use of their country's raw materials. A share of the tax should be going into a sovereign wealth fund - another idea advocated by Treasury but ignored by Labor. A fairer tax take could cover areas that have been neglected, such as a national dental care scheme and a high-speed rail system.

The mining tax should be fairer and it should apply to gold and uranium. As my colleague and Greens member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, explained earlier this month: "The inclusion of the gold would generate at least $1.8 billion in revenue over the next decade." But, of course, the government lacks the courage to stand up to the mining companies.

Gillard has alerted the ALP national conference that she wants Australia to begin exporting uranium to India. The Greens will oppose any such plan. Several Labor MPs have been critical of the Prime Minister's proposal and will speak out during next month's conference. Alas, I am yet to hear anyone from Labor advocating that uranium be taxed.

The Greens are prepared to amend the government's mining tax to ensure it is fairer. The reforms to superannuation and the corporate tax rates that are linked to the tax revenue also need refining, and the Greens are prepared to help the government.

First, we should use the opportunity to review the superannuation tax concessions. Increasing the level of superannuation is vital for the welfare and financial security of Australians, but it also must be reformed to include progressive rates of superannuation taxation.

Second, the government should be considering the needs of small businesses - the real lifeblood of the Australian economy - before handing out tax concessions to the big corporations such as the big four banks.

Small business operators deserve a cut in the tax rate by 5 per cent to 25 per cent - and if the government scrapped the 1 per cent cut to the corporate tax rate they could afford it. Cutting the banks' rate by 1 per cent would hand the banks another $4 billion over the next decade. The big four banks have recently announced a combined annual profit of more than $25 billion. Do we really need to be assisting them with cuts, while small businesses deal with rising costs?

These are all commonsense proposals and should be taken up. Rather than a fair tax on largely foreign companies extracting our mineral future, this week it looks like the government will only deliver Australia one that resembles a tattered coat.

First published in The National Times on Tuesday, 22 November 2011.