Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning, there's been a very interesting poll running in the MorningBulletin. They've been asking, 'Should build more coal-fired power stations?' So far, the response is 9,300 yeses and 132 noes. The world is moving on. Australia is moving on. A sense of sanity is coming back into the debate, and people want us to bring down power prices.

We have it reported in the AFR that they're about to spend a billion dollars on getting the COP to Adelaide—a billion dollars so we can have more parking bays for corporate jets. If you don't believe that that is just wasting a billion dollars, then you should get out of the Paris Agreement, because the Paris Agreement and the COP are linked hand in glove. I do not believe in the Paris Agreement. I want to look after pensioners. I do not believe in spending a billion dollars and putting a billion dollars up against the wall so corporate jets, billionaires, grifters, bureaucrats and politicians can whoop it up in Adelaide. I believe you should be putting that money into hospitals, into schools, into research—looking after people.

The priorities of this government—it's beholden to the billionaire scam, which is the intermittent-power swindle; to the COP conferences; and to the Paris Agreement. It's beholden to a loss of logic, and it's incredibly selfish. Look to the poor. Look after them. Don't worry about COP.