I rise this evening to speak on the government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, introduced in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 and related bills. As members in the chamber would be aware, the Greens have been campaigning on climate change for more than 20 years. In fact, I was appointed to Australia's first greenhouse council in Victoria in 1990, when I was in the Tasmanian parliament. I have been working on that issue ever since in the state parliament, in the federal parliament and globally through the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Greens around the world have taken a very strong position on this.

I could not disagree more with the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator Joyce, in his summation of the current situation in relation to climate change. He said things are changing constantly, and they are. But that has no truck with the sceptics. Things are changing very quickly and the science is showing that we are tracking at the worst-case-scenario end of what was predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Three months ago in Copenhagen, some of the leading scientists came to assess how we were tracking against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which assessed the science from a few years previously. This report came out last Thursday and said:

Many key climate indicators are already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which contemporary society and economy have developed and thrived. These indicators include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, global ocean temperature, Arctic sea ice extent, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. With unabated emissions, many trends in climate will likely accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.