FRAN KELLY: And we keep focussing on Tony Abbott’s direct action climate change plan released yesterday because the pressure isn’t just on Tony Abbott to sell this plan, it’s also on the Government to deliver its Emissions Trading Scheme which so far, it’s failed to do. Greg Combet is the Minister Assisting on Climate Change and he joins us now in our Parliament House studio. Minister good morning.

GREG COMBET: How are you going Fran?

FRAN KELLY: Greg Combet, voters now have a clear choice on which direction Australia should take on climate change, is it time to take this to the people?

GREG COMBET: I think there is a bit of debate to go yet and the Prime Minister has made clear we are going to continue to serve our term, but I think the starting point with Tony Abbott’s policy announced yesterday – let’s just go back to some of the things he said in relation to his stance on climate change because it is important to interpret what’s going on here.

He has said of course – his words – he thinks climate change science is ‘absolute crap’, so he doesn’t believe in it, and that’s the starting point but he’s also said it is a political problem for the Coalition because people want to see action on climate change. So he has had to come up with a policy for political purposes not to genuinely address the challenge that climate change represents and when you have a look at what he put forward yesterday, it is a sort of a political fig leaf or con job to try and trick people into thinking that he is trying to do something about climate change but it won’t work.

FRAN KELLY: Well the fact is that the Government – the Labor Party – does believe in the challenge of climate change but you have a political problem too and if the Prime Minister believes that an Emissions Trading Scheme is the best way to address what he has called ‘the great moral challenge of our generation’ isn’t the only way you are going to get an ETS through in this country at a joint sitting after a double dissolution election – you’ve got to go to a double D, don’t you?

GREG COMBET: Well it is not my position to speculate about that, you’ve just got to remember though that less than ten weeks ago we actually had an agreement with the Coalition –

FRAN KELLY: But you don’t have one anymore, there is only one person in the Opposition party room that is going to back your plan.

GREG COMBET: No we don’t, but I can tell you we are resolute to get our legislation through and so last night I re-introduced it to the House of Representatives, which includes the agreement that was reached with the Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership. So the legislation that the Government has in the House of Representatives – respectful of the science, of course it’s based on the science – is seeking to make the cuts that will see Australia play its part internationally in attacking the issue of climate change. But it is also a piece of legislation that is capable of bipartisan support and you’ve got to remember that Malcolm Turnbull rightly observed – as John Howard did – that an Emissions Trading Scheme is the most economically efficient way to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – that is, it’s an incentive for the large emitters of carbon pollution to achieve the reductions in emissions that we need in the cheapest, most effective way.

FRAN KELLY: But Greg Combet, the game has changed, the political response is different, the global response after Copenhagen is different, the electorate feels differently about this issue, you can’t deny that, can you?

GREG COMBET: Well that might be the perception but the fact of the matter is the climate science is still there, we still need to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an emissions trading scheme is the best way to achieve targeted cuts in emissions and to link with international efforts to tackle climate change – that certainly hasn’t changed. The debate may have changed a bit, and also you’ve got to look at Copenhagen with a little bit of perspective. Sure it didn’t deliver everything that we and other countries would have liked, but it nonetheless made important steps forward and discussions of course internationally are ongoing.

It doesn’t change the fact that Australia has a lot to lose from climate change, that it is one of the most serious public policy issues that we face, and to deal with it you need a serious public policy response and Tony Abbott’s response yesterday is a joke, it’s lame, it’s a con job and I think people will see through it. It does not deliver on any sort of a cap or targeted reductions in emissions, it doesn’t even oblige the large emitters of carbon pollution in our economy to reduce their pollution one iota. They can just go on, business as usual, no problems. But it puts there, you know, a fund that the National Party will be able to get its fingers into and start to identify a few winners that they would like to see funded, I mean it is not a serious effort to tackle climate change.

FRAN KELLY: Greg Combet, thank you very much for joining us on Breakfast.

GREG COMBET: Thanks Fran.

END