Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Then Senator Canavan piled in and the member for Warringah piled in to back him, Senator Canavan, and the CEO of AGL said: 'Wait a sec, there are no discussions. We've made a commercial decision to get out of coal and we've made a decision to close the Liddell power station at the end of its 50-year operating life in 2022.'

This Prime Minister might think he can breezily wave a finger and wave away the commercial realities that AGL and other companies have to operate under, but it doesn't work that way. He's got to do the hard work of taking a clean energy target proposition through his coalition party room and coming to the negotiating table with Labor to do what every single business stakeholder has asked this national parliament to do, and that is to finally develop a bipartisan energy policy investment framework—the type of which has bedevilled this country for too many years. This is only one example of the contrast between a very small and modest piece of legislation that we support and we think is laudable and the rest of the economy—those parts of the economy that aren't simply focused on lawnmowers and leaf blowers. Nothing is being done by this government—nothing is being done to deal with the investment transition and the job opportunities that come from decarbonising this economy.

With those words, I move:

That all words after "that" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give this bill and related bills a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

  (a) in addition to the products in these bills, there is a large range of products and activities that contribute the vast majority of emissions to Australia's total emissions;

  (b) the Government has failed to act to limit these emissions including from land clearing, the industrial sector, the transport sector and from electricity generation, which has led to emissions rising by 1.4 per cent in the last quarter alone; and

  (c) the Government has failed to act on climate change and is threatening our economy and precious environment for current and future generations; and

(2) calls on the Government to take the advice it commissioned itself, and implement the central Finkel review recommendation of a Clean Energy Target for the electricity sector."

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