Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for his question, and I did have the opportunity overnight to follow up some of what he asked yesterday. I'm advised that the closures he talked about were in fact announced under your government. So I do find it somewhat passing strange that you try to make political mileage, as you are doing and as you did yesterday, about a closure that was actually flagged under you. That's probably a fact I should have been aware of, and I'm grateful to my colleagues and to the departments for letting me know that. But these are closures that were flagged under the former coalition government.

Obviously we are working with the New South Wales government—which I note has an emissions reduction target of 50 per cent by 2030, so I look forward to your criticism of them, if that is in fact the way you want to approach this—to ensure that the Hunter and other regions benefit from new jobs and opportunities in clean energy. One of the differences between those on that side of the chamber and those on this side is that we want to look after workers. We're a movement and a party that has workers at our core.