Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand corrected. Thank you very much, Deputy President. I'll go back to the important issue at hand. Earlier on, Senator Wong said this government was full of inaction—inaction! You're talking about a government that has seen massive reductions in emissions since coming into this place and taking on government in 2013. We've done this through technology, not taxes, and through working in partnership with industry. Instead of hitting industry over the head with a big stick, like an ETS or a carbon tax, we've sat down with industry and said: 'How can we all work together? How can we lower emissions? How can we incentivise innovation?' We're partnering with the private sector to bring a portfolio of low-emissions technologies into parity with their current alternatives. We're working on what is available today, but also with an eye on the future, because, when we're talking about a 2050 target, that is 30 years away. Imagine if we'd sat down 30 years ago and said, 'This mobile phone that I have in my handbag today'—because it wouldn't have fit in my pocket—'is going to be the mobile phone we're using in 30 years time.' It is ridiculous to try and cement us into a position.

What we are doing is laying the foundations for a road map, but we're not doing it blindly and we're not doing it deafly, and that is why the Nationals are negotiating. That is why the Nationals are looking at protections to underpin the very jobs and industries that have kept our economy strong through COVID. If it weren't for our agricultural and mining sectors, if it weren't for our exports of iron ore, coal, beef, wheat and rice—in the last year, we've had a good rice harvest as well—we wouldn't have made it through COVID with the economic strength that we have. We wouldn't have been the first country to return to the same number of employed people as pre COVID. So the Nationals— (Time expired)