Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Around two weeks ago I paid a visit to an old schoolfriend and her mum on a Saturday evening. This friend has been living in London for 10 or 15 years but had flown back to care for her mother, who was in late-stage cancer. It was both a sad and a happy occasion. It was just as the storm had been raging for a couple of days. My friend's mum and I had a special bond. When my friend and I were at high school her mum actually used to try to set me up with her daughter as a future wife. It was not to be. Her name was Wendy, the same as my mum's name. So we always had a special bond, and I was very sad to receive a text message late last week saying that she had passed away. But it was lovely to spend that evening with her and the family. She was a feisty woman. She had been a teacher, a pioneer for equal pay for women teachers, and she used to be a Liberal voter, early in her life, until that equal pay stuff came to pass. But she was a very fair woman from middle Australia and always had a great interest in politics. She turned the conversation, as we were sitting there, to Malcolm Turnbull, and she used our time to express her profound disappointment as she, like many of us, had hoped for better.

I confess to the House that I, in my time as a public servant, out of politics, actually quite liked the Prime Minister. I used to not dislike him when I heard him on the radio. He often made sense, and you would sometimes—I know it is heresy!—find yourself nodding, thinking, 'Yeah, okay: that kind of makes sense; I can go along with that.' Or maybe he just was not as completely gross as many of his colleagues. But when we were talking, I said to my friend's mum that each side gets a turn, and you hope that they stick to their convictions and do some good things for the country. But she expressed to me her bitter disappointment at his failing prime ministership and how in her view, being a student of politics, he had sold out all of his core beliefs. She touched on marriage equality, education, the environment and the republic, and she summed it up as perhaps someone with the clarity and wisdom of a dying person can do: 'Julian, we are not seeing his policies; we are seeing his character.'

In my view, the Prime Minister has surrendered to the extremists in his party on every issue he ever believed in—or said he believed in. Energy security and renewable energy are, sadly, no exception. Australians have every right to be deeply and bitterly disappointed. You may remember the quote from the current Prime Minister, who said that he would not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as he is, or the more pontifical quote:

Now you can look at the targets, 50 per cent the common sort of rubric rule of thumb is to cut emissions by 2050 … I promise you, you cannot achieve that cut, you cannot achieve it without getting to a point by mid-century where all or almost all of our stationary energy, that is to say energy from power stations and big factories and so forth comes from zero emission sources.

We heard about his praise for South Australia's renewables during the campaign. We heard about his time as the environment minister, preaching about technology and renewables and how these things can provide base load power. We thought we had a new style of politics—intelligent, reasonable leadership, thoughtful and evidence based.

I am new here; this is my third week. I was actually quite stunned in question time on Monday when the Prime Minister was asked a simple question—we were all here: 'What is the government's policy to support renewable energy projects after 2020?' And he had no answer—no commitments, no policy, no targets, no plan—zip. He waffled for a bit, then he chucked to the Minister for the Environment and Energy.

I went to university with the Minister for the Environment and Energy, and he is a very lovely guy. We have a lot of mutual friends. He is perfect for the modern Liberal Party, because he does not really believe in anything in particular. So, he is perfect for this portfolio. He came into parliament, as the Victorians would know, as sort of a wet Lib—fairly progressive—but now he has tacked to the right, so who knows where he will end up.

But to summarise the points that have been made: this is not a new thing. This has been generated by the storm. The storm, however, is just the latest excuse in an ongoing ideological war—the irony of being lectured about ideology by those opposite!—on renewable energy. They tried to abolish the target. And I will finish by talking just briefly about investment stability and certainty. We heard a lot about investment stability and how we need certainty for industry to invest. We agree that industry needs confidence to invest, and certainty. And Labor compromised. There is no shame in difficult compromise. We took a hard decision to compromise and provide that certainty for industry in the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. For reasons of energy security, climate change and the economy, in terms of new investment and jobs, we deserve better. We look forward to seeing the government sitting down and engaging in a rational debate, not pursuing their rabid ideology against renewable energy.

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