Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Higgins knows and has been a champion of understanding that Australians understand and support the need to take action on climate change. So do I, and so does my government. I know this because Australians are already taking action on climate change; already they're doing it. Australia's emissions have already fallen by more than 20 per cent since 2005. That's stronger than countries like the US, like Canada, like New Zealand, like Japan. In fact, we have exceeded their emissions reductions over that period of time, and we've done that at the same time as we've seen record levels of renewable investment and renewable energy coming into our system and ensuring that we're setting up opportunities for the future, exceeding many times over the global average—some eight times the global average—when it comes to the installation of renewable energy in Australia. And on top of that we're meeting and beating the emissions reductions targets that we set, that we took to the Australian people and that they supported. They not only supported having a sensible and responsible target, but they also supported the fact that they knew we would seek to meet and beat those targets, which is exactly what we're doing. We expect to see a 35 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 based on the policies that we've been pursuing.

We're doing this at the same time the economy has grown by 45 per cent. Three million jobs have come into the economy. We're growing our exports, including our minerals exports and our gas exports, especially in the LNG sector, creating so much wealth and jobs for this country, and we're doing it while we're putting Australians back into manufacturing jobs. There are a million Australians in manufacturing jobs. Under Labor, one in eight manufacturing jobs was gone. They went. We're reducing emissions, growing our economy, putting people back into manufacturing jobs, supporting their jobs in agriculture, supporting them in the resources sector, and that's what our plan does. Our detailed plan to achieve a net zero target by 2050 is a uniquely Australian plan. It gets the balance right to ensure that we protect jobs, protect livelihoods, protect incomes, protect their way of life, keep downward pressure on their household costs, to ensure we can get the balance right in the plans that are necessary.

This is a uniquely Australian way to deal with this because we need a uniquely Australian solution to deal with our economy. The actions of Australia speak far louder than the words of many others who will speak from many other places. We will not have our plans determined by any others than those who remain in this government, in this place, for Australians, by Australians, and that is the plan that we're going forward with, which protects our economy and meets our commitment.

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