Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's certainly no love lost for Adani in Newcastle and the Hunter region. It's been one of those rare issues where the environmental movement, the local miners, the mining industry and, indeed, the Port of Newcastle are as one in their opposition to the Adani mine. The reality, of course, is that the Adani mine will create very few new jobs in Queensland. Indeed, in my region it looks much more like, possibly, a transfer of existing jobs out of one region and into another.

Unlike members opposite, Labor has never disputed the science of climate change. Renewables are indeed our future and they are already much cheaper than coal, yet there is the anti-science position the government's been waging in the form of a relentless war on climate action and renewable energies since the day they came to power. We see it played out in preselection bouts now and we see that those who are being rewarded and protected are amongst those leading the charge on climate change denial for the government. I remain enormously sceptical about whether the latest Adani plan could ever proceed. The market's already spoken and not a single company's willing to back them. Why should we?