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

We are facing ecological collapse, and the climate is literally breaking down around us, yet in one of the greatest shakedowns in Australian political history, the National Party are using this existential crisis to stick out their collective hands for billions of dollars of public money in order to support a shift in rhetoric around a 2050 target. This is not only grifting of the highest order, it completely misses the point, because the science is abundantly clear. We need to act now. We need targets for 2030, not 2050, and most importantly, we need to ensure that no more new coal is extracted, exported and burnt. We need to make sure there are no new gas projects to extract, export and burn gas, which is just as damaging in climate terms as coal is. We also need to make sure that we stop strip-mining our native forests in this country, emitting vast amounts of carbon and destroying precious habitats for our threatened species. Those are the things that we should be focused on, not on meaningless distracting debate around a 2050 target. We need the Labor Party to focus on 2030, we need the government to focus on 2030 and we need the media to focus on 2030 because this is the critical decade.(Time expired)

Question agreed to.