Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sometimes you see a motion from the opposition and you just scratch your head, and that's exactly what happened as I saw this on the Notice Paper a couple of weeks ago. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the government's environmental credentials at a time when the opposition don't even have an environmental policy. They're tearing themselves apart over environmental policy, and here today we've got this motion. This motion lays bare the arrogance and hypocrisy of those opposite who try to call out a government that's actually doing something about the environment when they did nothing to protect it in their nine years in government. As I said, this is all at a time when they're tearing themselves apart over net zero.

Let's be very clear. Australians rejected the Liberals' and Nationals' environmental vandalism at the ballot box not once but twice because they saw a decade of climate denial, division and delay. They axed climate laws. They sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They cut funding to the environment department by 40 per cent. They halved marine parks, ignored Indigenous water commitments and left the Great Barrier Reef on the brink of being listed in danger. That is the coalition's legacy, and it continues. It didn't end at the 2022 election, which you thought it would. It didn't end at the 2025 election, when they were thumped.

Just this weekend, the Queensland Liberals voted to dump net zero as their major environmental policy—gone. That follows on from the Liberals' and Nationals' state divisions across the country—in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory—all dumping net zero. They can't even agree on that. Sometimes I don't even think they can agree on what day of the week it is, but they can't agree on net zero. They're in here today feigning outrage and saying that we don't have environmental credentials, and we're actually doing something about it. Australians do not trust them on the environment, and that's why they've been rejected at the last two elections.

Since coming to office, our government has overturned nearly a decade of denial and delay and put Australia back on track when it comes to taking action on climate change. The results are clear. We've legislated stronger emissions reduction targets: a 43 per cent cut by 2030 and net zero by 2050. We put those targets into law so no future government can walk them back—

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