Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In that case, Deputy President, they've sold out to climate criminals like Mr Tony Abbott on their backbench. You have to ask yourself: how do those in this government sleep at night when they're selling the Great Barrier Reef down the drain and selling renewables down the drain with it? I've got an answer. I know how they sleep at night: on mattresses stuffed with hundred dollar bills donated by their mates in the coal industry. That's what this policy has delivered on today. It's delivered on the wishes of the coal industry in this country.

It's payday today for the coal industry in Australia. The fossil fuel industry donates millions of dollars to the Labor and Liberal parties in every election cycle, and for that money they get policy outcomes from the Liberal-National party such as those we've seen today. The LNP don't care about future generations, because they want the economy to work for the big polluters and no-one else. They don't care, because young people actually don't matter to them. We see that in housing policy settings and private health insurance policy settings and we've had it confirmed again today—as if we needed it—in the government's energy policy announcement. They don't care about young people today and they don't care about young people into the future. If they did they would be announcing policies that drove a more rapid uptake of renewable energy, a more rapid transition out of coal-fired power in this country. But they don't do that, because they only care about their massive donors in the fossil fuel industry in this country and their post-parliamentary careers in the fossil fuel sector.

This government is growing increasingly delusional. Those opposite are attacking Australia's biggest polluter, AGL, for not being pro coal enough. They are attacking Australia's biggest miners because they are moving away from coal. They're attacking the big banks because they don't want to risk their shareholders' money by investing in coal. This government has completely lost the plot. I am sorry to say that in this country energy policy is one of the major casualties of that losing of the plot. It is chopped and changed day to day. New thought bubbles are announced from week to week. Last week we had Tony Abbott sacrificing goats to volcanos, and this week we have Malcolm Turnbull asking, 'How high?' when Mr Abbott has told him to jump. Energy policy in this country is a disgrace and I apologise to future generations for the misery that announcements like today's are heaping on them.

Question agreed to.