Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I don't think he noticed what happened to Josh Frydenberg and Katie Allen—the teals and the whole climate emergency. Who knows!

This is a nasty, bizarre little motion. It's like a series of Sky News talking points and conspiracy theories vomited onto the parliamentary Notice Paper. As the previous speaker, the member for Fremantle, said, it's a 'cloud of bulldust'. It's wrong, it's false, it's nonsensical and it's misinformation.

But let's cut the rubbish. Let's call out in plain English what they're actually trying to say with all their fancy words that they're bandying about. They're trying to say: 'The government are a bunch of woke sell-outs because they believe in climate change, and they just signed a sneaky globalist agreement to give trillions of dollars to China and a bunch of other poor countries where coloured people live. Please be very angry, because the government didn't splash cash in the budget, like we did, and push up interest rates.' That's what it boils down to. It's complete nonsense. All that's missing are chemtrails, antivax mandates, gender theory and globalism. Go and talk to your Liberal Party mates in Victoria and see how well that went on the weekend. What I heard then is exactly the kind of nonsense that the Victorian Liberal Party, who just got smashed, are on about.

Some have, perhaps unkindly, compared the member for Fairfax to Mr Sheen—an unfortunate resemblance. Mr Sheen, as the saying goes, cleans, shines and protects. The member for Fairfax smears, sullies and discredits with this motion. The good thing is, though, it's so broad that I can make a few points in response. Member for Fairfax, science is real, climate change is real, and we need to actually do something about that. Australia can't fix the problem alone, because we share the climate with other humans in other countries. We need to work together with other countries. That's why we go to COP27, to talk about what we can do together.

The loss-and-damage fund is about developed countries helping developing countries. It's not about reparations and compensation. Even if you don't care about the increase in natural disasters; even if you don't care, member for Fairfax, that more than 90 per cent of deaths—that's right, other human beings dying; I don't think that registers the empathy bypass over there—all happen in developing countries; even if you don't care about the fate that awaits the poorest on the planet for their societies and economies from runaway climate change, it's in Australia's national interest to collaborate. We're the developed country most exposed in the world to climate change. Australians will bear the brunt of runaway bushfires, out-of-control floods, desertification and salinity creeping across our continent.

It's Australia, though, that has the most to gain of any developed country in a zero-carbon world. We have the best resources. We can bring back manufacturing onshore, member for Fairfax, in this zero-carbon world, and it's critical for a stable region. Let's be blunt: it's cheaper and better to provide aid and assistance to other countries to manage their transition than it is to commit military bases and combat failed states on our doorstep. Do you want to talk about security? That's a security threat. So, instead of carping and spreading your conspiracy theories via the national parliament, I would encourage the opposition to take this seriously, unlike the Victorian liberals.

An agreement is not a contract to pay money. Any funding into the loss-and-damage fund will be a matter for future negotiations between parties, as you've been told. And your scare campaign about Labor giving money to China, as you well know, is nonsense. You're relying on a list from 1992 of countries that were then considered developing countries. As you well know, because you've been told, no money is going into that fund until there's a new list of developing countries. If you think that this country is going to give money to China, you're as bonkers as your colleague who spoke before you and, no doubt, those who are going to come after you. You can see them sitting in tactics: 'I know, we'll whip up a scare campaign with the Chinese community.' Just pathetic! You are the lowest form of grub I've seen—

See this speech in context