Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hanson-Young for her contribution on this bill. The Albanese government will not be supporting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022. Since this bill was introduced in 2022, quite a lot has changed. You would not think so after listening to my colleagues in the Greens, but a lot of action has been undertaken. There has been a lot of change. But, if we understand how our environment works, how our economy works and how our society works, these things do not change overnight. You don't just snap your fingers and solve climate change.

We all know that we spent a very long, painful and agonising decade with the coalition in charge, undoing any work that the previous Labor government had put together to address climate change and, as Senator Hanson-Young rightly points out, tearing each other apart in their own party room and working desperately to take no action on climate change. As some of them do openly admit, they actually don't believe that climate change is a thing. They don't believe it's real. They don't believe that the scientists are correct. They don't see the growing anxiety and disaster that is looming across the world because of the issue of climate change. And not to leave our new colleagues on the crossbench over there out of the picture—they don't believe in climate change either. Welcome to you both.

We're in a situation where Australia needs to take strong action. We need to continue to take strong action. We need to address the situations that we are starting to see. As we know, the algal bloom in South Australia has in part been connected to the warming ocean tides that we've seen in the last few months. As a government, you can't just go and turn the regulator down. You can't just go: 'Ooh, it's a bit hot. Let's turn the ocean down.' You actually have to take real, sustainable, long-term action to reduce emissions, and that takes a lot of hard work. Transforming our economy takes a lot of hard work. Changing Australia to be a sustainable green industry takes time. And that's not an excuse—that is a fact. To reorient our economy and our actions takes time. We have done a great deal in the first term of the Labor government. We have made significant inroads. Is it enough? No, and not once have we said that it is. Do we need to continue to strengthen our action? Do we need to continue to take action? Yes, we do.

But the problem we face—and we see it in this chamber all the time—is that we stand here on the government benches taking action, looking to the future of Australia, building Australia into a long-term sustainable economic future—