House debates

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Constituency Statements

Climate Change

4:18 pm

Photo of Matt ThistlethwaiteMatt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

The people of Kingsford Smith are deeply concerned about the Turnbull government's lack of action on climate change and lack of support for renewable energy policy. There's a feeling in the community I represent that Australia is now going backwards when it comes to taking action on climate change and that we're not caring for our kids' future, because ultimately we will pass on responsibility for taking action on climate change to them if we don't do enough in this generation to tackle the issue.

The Abbott and Turnbull governments, when they came to office, removed the price on carbon emissions and carbon pollution. They tried to cut funding for the Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. They succeeded in cutting the Renewable Energy Target, and state Liberal and National Party governments have introduced broad land-clearing laws once again into Australia. The result is that carbon pollution is now again on the increase in Australia. Can you believe it? When every other nation in the world is putting in place the necessary government policies to reduce carbon pollution, Australia is going in the opposite direction and carbon emissions are now beginning to increase in our country. That's clear evidence of the Turnbull government's failure to take the necessary action on climate change and to take seriously this issue of protecting our kids' futures.

Now the government are attempting to make the situation worse with their policy on energy that has been released over the course of the last week. The war on climate that is going on within the Liberal Party has seen Malcolm Turnbull, who used to believe in climate change and actually crossed the floor to vote with the Labor Party on a carbon pollution reduction scheme, completely change his tune. He has gone further to the right than Tony Abbott on these issues and has cut the Renewable Energy Target for 2020 completely under this new proposal. There will be no price on carbon emissions as the government seek to delay the phasing out of dirty, coal-fired, polluting power stations in our country.

The people of Kingsford Smith are sick and tired of this lack of action and the changing positions within the Liberal and National parties. I've recently received two petitions, one from 700 constituents urging deeper action on climate change, deeper cuts to emissions and more renewables, and one from 697 people from Kingsford Smith urging that no taxpayer funds be put into the Adani Carmichael mine from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. I thank all those who signed these two very, very important petitions. Labor are listening. Labor understand that we need to have a price on carbon emissions, reduce carbon pollution in our economy, ensure we are supporting renewables and ensure we have a land-clearing trigger. Labor will take the necessary action to fight climate change.