Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Who's in charge today? It looks like the Greens are in charge. It is again another great, big preview into what life after the next election is going to be like if there is a minority Labor-Green government elected. We've had the Greens march in and tell Labor what deal they want today, what deal they want to strike, and it's great for Australians to know, ahead of this election, that this is the kind of stuff they can expect on steroids after the election.

The bills that the Greens are insisting pass through are the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 and the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024, and the Greens are suggesting that these bills somehow will benefit a cohort of people that the Liberals are opposed to. I'll tell you what the first bill they want to rush through this place won't do—the one about more renewables. It won't bring down power prices by one cent. Here we are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and one of the biggest pressures households face is power prices. And we can't forget that Prime Minister Albanese and his frontbench went out there and said 97 times before Australians cast their vote at the previous election that power bills would go down by $275. Instead of that actually being the case, Australian households are on average paying more than $1,000 more in power bills per year. The government's response to this crisis that Australian households and businesses are facing is to jam into this place—in partnership with, facilitated by and brought on by the Greens—a bill to bring more renewables into the grid and fast-track all of that, which will again drive up power prices.

This is an amazing insight into how a Labor-Green government will work after this election. They give no care when it comes to the cost-of-living crisis households are facing. Here we are on the death knell, the last sitting day, I expect, before the election, and this is demonstrating this government's priorities in partnership with their friends, their coalition partners, the Greens. It's about electricity infrastructure legislation, very benignly named, but you can be guaranteed that this will not only not do a thing to ease the burdens that households and businesses face but also make things far worse.

It will be interesting to see whether the government support this approach being led by the Greens. I've lived through Labor-Green governments in Tasmania, and we've seen it here at a federal level. They are disastrous. Things that are bad get worse under Labor-Green governments. Industries shut down. Investors flee the country because they know that there will be no certainty. Sovereign risk becomes an issue. Jobs evaporate, particularly in our regions, where you have miners, fishers, foresters and farmers being strangled by green tape. This legislation that this cohort, the Australian Greens in partnership with the Labor Party, are going to rush through this place will make all of that worse.

This is a prime example of what a Bandt-Albanese government would look like after this election if people are conned into voting for them. If the government roll over and allow this to happen, it is proof positive that the government will be like this after the election. They will happily wave through whatever agenda it is the Greens want to bring on. In Tasmania we have a saying: 'It's the Green tail wagging the Labor dog.' Having lived through a Labor-Green government and having seen what destruction is wreaked upon a jurisdiction—in our case Tasmania, where we saw our economy continually shrink, with great swathes of productive and well-managed land locked up at the behest of the Greens—I ask: what's on the table here? If the goal is to stay on the Treasury benches and for Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, to hang onto the keys to the Lodge, what price will he pay to do that? We are getting hints and previews, and can I tell you that anything that the Australian Greens vote for is generally very, very bad. They are not pro jobs. They are not pro the economy. They are certainly not pro regional Australia. They're a party that claim to be the friends of the worker and say they will have a future made in Australia. None of that is possible if you do deals with this crowd down the end here who want to choke our economy. They represent downtown Melbourne and Sydney—big population centres—not people in our regions. I say to the government: don't roll over. Don't be led by the Australian Greens here. It'll be bad for Australians, and you know it. Prove them wrong, and don't support this ridiculous motion.