Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened to the debate carefully and read the resolution, and what a choice: either support the Greens party's resolution or hang out with the troglodytes in the government on these questions. It's not a happy choice. We are entitled, I think, in the Labor Party to approach Greens resolutions on climate change with a little bit of scepticism. This year will be the 11th or 12th—I've lost count—anniversary of the Greens political party voting with the Liberals on the CPRS. Imagine what a world we would be living in today in Australia! We would have lower emissions in the country. We would have had much less carbon emitted into the atmosphere. We would have had consistently lower, stable power prices because there would have been an energy investment framework that would have allowed the private sector and government to work together to deliver a cleaner energy mix. There would have been more jobs—better jobs—in the Australian economy, particularly in the regions. We would have continued to export coal to global markets at the same time, as Australia wouldn't have been internationally isolated, going backwards economically and bleeding jobs, particularly in our regional towns.

But I don't want to spend too much time on the Greens political party today. I want to spend a little bit more time on the government. I listened to Senator Henderson's contribution very, very carefully. It reminded me that where the government's front is at the moment—what they say on climate change—is a little bit like what Saint Augustine had to say about chastity: 'We're all for it—just not yet.'

There are three kinds of politician in the Liberal and National Party on these questions. There's the front, which is what we saw from Senator Henderson—the modern Liberals, the mealy-mouthed apologists in craven capitulation to the government's backbench. We saw the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Birmingham, in question time. It was a revolting display of quivering, craven capitulation to the backbench on the one hand but wanting to present to the Australian community as if there was some real action on climate change and energy policy on the other.

The second group is the hard Right in the Liberal and National Party. They try and keep their views in the shadows as much as possible, apart from when the now Prime Minister bursts out on the floor of the parliament with a big lump of coal and waves it around. It was carefully varnished so none of the coal dust would dirty his beautiful white shirt, a luxury that most of the workers who Senator Canavan cosplay dresses as when he puts his high-vis on don't have. You have the hard Right, such as Senator Canavan, who will say that he supports coal workers in regional Queensland on the one hand but apparently wants to decouple the Australian economy from the Chinese economy on the other. He's for jobs on the one hand and not for jobs on the other. He's all for mining workers in the iron ore industry, but he wants to introduce an export levy on Australian iron ore exports. He says he's for manufacturing, but he released and led the maddest manufacturing plan that any political party has released, which, if ever adopted by the government, would push up power prices and drive tens of thousands of Australian jobs offshore. Then you've got the third group: the fruit loops, the climate science deniers. There's a common thread with this group. They're not big on climate science, and they're not particularly big on coronavirus and public epidemiology science either. You've got Mr Kelly hanging out with Pete Evans and all of the other fruit loops in the social media world—who want to tell Australians that they should not take the vaccine, sending a dangerous message—and hanging out with all of the QAnon conspiracy theorists. That group is such a big group on the coalition backbench, and that's the reason why the government has had more than 20 energy policies over the course of the eight unhappy years that this government has been in office.

There is a strong alternative. The Labor Party represents a strong alternative on these issues. Chris Bowen said late last week that climate policy is jobs policy and energy policy is jobs policy. In government, we would have very simple objectives: driving down the price of electricity and energy; delivering more good jobs in our suburbs and our regions; delivering a cleaner environment and lower emissions; and continuing to try and drive a position where we've got good jobs, a future in our regions and our country towns, and Australia once again rejoins the international community on these questions and delivers real positive change on the question of climate.