Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer given by Minister Birmingham to the question asked by Senator Gallagher, who's still here in the chamber. Sometimes my breath is just taken away by the crazy statements that I hear coming from those opposite, who have been in government for eight years—eight years already! They've had three terms in government. They've had 493 weeks to have the kind of debate of which Senator Scarr has just said, 'We are having a debate in this house, on this side of the chamber.' After 493 weeks and 21 energy policies—they're on the cusp of the 22nd—they're still having a debate. That's not leadership; that's a joke.

Senator Birmingham, in his defence of this failure in climate policy, actually commenced his answer here in the chamber this afternoon, in response to Senator Gallagher, by saying, 'We will not leave regional and rural communities behind.' I've got news for him: he's left them behind. For those 493 weeks, they know that they have been left behind, and they know that they are being taken for granted by this National Party set of representatives who come to Canberra, who are here to look after themselves and who have jettisoned the good interests of the people of regional Australia—people who are dying at a higher rate than their cousins in the cities because they have no access to proper GPs or any health care. The regions have well and truly been left behind by this government, which does not deserve another term.

If there's anything that the last three years of the Morrison government have taught us, it's that the Prime Minister is prepared to spend any number of taxpayer dollars to keep his spot in the Lodge. But he's a miser when it comes to NDIS staffing levels. He was a miser when he refused to reintroduce JobKeeper during the most recent lockdowns, when businesses across the great state of New South Wales, which I represent, were getting absolutely slammed. But, when it comes to buying voters or buying the compliance of his coalition partner, Mr Morrison has shown that he's willing to spend as much as $20 billion to try to keep this rabble, which considers itself the Australian government, loosely cobbled together. Twenty billion dollars—that's the sum that it's reportedly going to cost the taxpayers of Australia in order for the Nationals to stay in the cart with Mr Morrison. The Nationals are finally being bought off, despite their continued ignoring of the science and their failure to back climate change. This all should have been figured out eight years ago. We've had eight long years of government, and here, at two minutes to midnight, with the horses bolting off to Glasgow, we've got $20 billion of discussion underway because Mr Morrison's found that he actually can't work with his coalition partners, so he's going to buy them off and grease the re-election of his government by using billions and billions of dollars to buy votes.

Farmers throughout New South Wales have struggled through adverse weather, including bushfires, tornados and droughts—all caused by the rapidly changing climate. The National Party have continued to bury their heads in the sand while farmers, agricultural business owners and investors in that sector in Australia have actually seen what's going on and have tried to get this out-of-touch National Party rump on board with reality. Senator McKenzie's in here saying, 'It's great. We've had a 75-year effective partnership with the Liberal Party.' This is not a partnership; it's a debacle. It's delivered for Australia what Senator McKenzie described today as the poorest people in the country, the most marginalised people and the most vulnerable people. It's been 75 years of a supposed partnership—it sounds more like a toxic relationship—that is not delivering for the people of Australia, and $20 billion of good Australian taxpayer funded money should not be invested in some sort of fanciful way to appease the National Party, who don't even represent the people in this nation who live beyond the Great Dividing Range. They've sold their votes in an easy lie, rather than face the hard truths that—(Time expired)