Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I second the motion. Again, I would like to commend the member for Warringah on her good work on the Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation and Mitigation) Bill 2021. I wonder, when we get to 2050—a time when many of us will have grey hair and perhaps many of us won't still be here—what the young people of 2050 will say about us and today's debate. I wonder if they will say, 'What a wasted opportunity.' The member for Warringah has done the work. She's basically done all of the homework for the government with respect to COP26. We didn't even know if a member of the government was going to attend. It wasn't announced until just recently that the Prime Minister would attend. We had Prince Charles come out and speak on this. We should be leading the world because we have the space, we have the sun, we have the wind. We see other nations that don't have those natural resources at hand leading, and we are being left behind. Much has been said on this subject and many have suggested that this is not what people in regional Australia want. Well, let me say that I represent a regional electorate, as does the member for Indi. In fact, members of my electorate are so interested in this space that they attended a workshop where the member for Indi presented and talked about the renewable energy projects in her community.

We should be leading the world on solar. We should be leading the world on battery uptake, particularly in the home. We should be building those batteries. We should be leading the world on electric vehicle uptake, instead of reading reports that we are having some of the dirtiest vehicles dumped in Australia because of our lack of emissions control. We should be building those electric vehicles. Just recently, we had totally renewable Yackandandah follow up on the member for Indi's work, because we want to lead. We want to do this despite the actions of the government. There are employment opportunities here—huge employment opportunities. As the member for Warringah said, coal jobs will not be around, because there won't be any buyers. We have to support those communities to transition now rather than sell them falsehoods by saying that those jobs will be around. We need to help them and we need to stop treating Australia like a big sandpit. That is what we do. It is the laziest thing we could do; we dig up our minerals and we send them overseas. The rest of the world sees us as a pariah. We need to fix this. It is not too late. We all need to support the member for Warringah's bill. We need to take action, we need to have courage and we need to lead from the front.

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