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

It's going to get better! To turn to the substance of this motion—although 'substance' is an optimistic assessment of what we have before us—Labor won't be supporting it, but that's a foregone conclusion. It was written so that Labor would oppose it; that's what it was for. It's so the Greens have something to share on social media, so they can continue to justify their position in this chamber. The Greens aren't talking to the communities that actually have to live with the consequences of their ideas.

The Labor Party is the only political party in this country that's capable of enacting real action on climate change because we actually come from those communities. Consider Labor's candidate for the Hunter, Dan Repacholi, who actually works in the mining industry. Dan Repacholi has a more sophisticated understanding of climate change and what action on climate change means for the Australian energy system than the entire Greens caucus combined, because he lives it. It's his workmates, his family and his community who are in the middle of this debate. And as the future member for the Hunter, he will continue to fight for them and he'll continue to fight for their future, instead of treating this like a debating society.

I understand that it's attractive to have a fight between the Greens and the citizen scientists over there: poor old Senator Roberts, Senator Antic and some of those other characters who sit at home and twiddle the dials and fill out their own spreadsheets and try and work out what's really going on because the scientists must be conning them. Poor old Senator Roberts does it on the vaccines, too. Actually, there is a more serious issue here that goes to the heart of how this country is going to deal with the failure of the last decade and the climate conflicts of the last decade that have left us stone-cold, motherless last, instead of leading the world on these questions.

There is an alternative strategy and there is an alternative plan. Do you know what people should do? They should get behind it. This resolution comes as the floodwaters are working their way through the Richmond River and Wilsons River systems in Lismore. Once again, families are facing up to the consequences there. We should not be ambulance-chasing about these issues; we should be solving problems. After 34 long years, we've got to do better than this.

There is an alternative plan: the Albanese Labor plan. With $24 billion of public investment, it is a fully costed plan. It is the most effectively costed plan from an opposition in Australian political history. There will be 604,000 jobs, with five out of six of those jobs in the regions. By 2030, 82 per cent of the power in the electricity grid will be from renewable sources. Power prices will be down; that's guaranteed. There's a 43 per cent target by 2030 and a target of net zero by 2050 with a pathway to get there. There will be investment in manufacturing. You can choose. My view is that people ought to get behind a plan that could actually work.