Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a moment in history. Everyone in this chamber, everyone in the Senate, has the privilege of having the opportunity to be on the right side of history. It's a privilege, it's a responsibility and it's an opportunity to listen to what the Australian public have been saying to us and to act in the way that they want us to act.

I campaigned hard on Labor's climate change policy in my electorate. I talked about the climate emergency and reducing emissions, and a cleaner, better future. I talked about the employment opportunities that will come from becoming a renewable energy superpower. I talked about the fact that we can have a modern economy and be part of changing the course of the future for the better. And that's what my community voted for. That's what they voted for, and that's what this legislation will deliver.

Do you know what this legislation also does? It imposes accountability on government and on this parliament that we have never seen before. The member for Fairfax raised that the minister has talked about the fact that this legislation is not necessary to set a target. Well, of course it is not. We had all sorts of vague targets under the last government. You know what this legislation does? It holds the government to account for getting to that target. That is the part of the legislation he did not talk about. He didn't talk about the part of this legislation that says that there has to be an annual address to the parliament by the climate change minister to ensure that the parliament of the day is required to update the parliament and the country on the progress we are making to meet our climate goals. This legislation includes a mechanism to hold governments to account, including our government, because we believe in accountability and we believe in transparency and we believe that, if you say to the Australian people we are going to do something, you should get held to account about whether or not you do it.

The Climate Change Authority will assess and publish progress against our targets and will advise the government on future targets, a climate change authority that will have expertise and responsibility, and it will be restored to what it was meant to be after the damage that has been done to it over the last nine years.

Reasonable people can have a debate where they don't agree. Not everyone comes into this place with the same views about what the sciences says. But you can't anymore stand here and say that the science is wrong about the impacts of the changing climate. You cannot live in our country and see the devastation of the bushfires and the floods, you cannot see the weather events that are supposed to be one in 100 years happening year after year with an intensity and an impact that is greater than we have ever seen before and deny that the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere is impacting our climate unless you invent your own reality, and we weren't sent here to invent our own realities.

So I urge every member of this parliament to think about which side of history they want to be on, to think about how they will be viewed in the decades to come, when the young people who are sitting up in that gallery watching this debate, when the young people in our community are our age and they are looking back at the decisions that were made that impacted the environment and the jobs and the economy that they inherited from us.

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