Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to join my South Australian colleagues on this side of the House on this matter of public importance. What a great shame it is that we have a government here in Canberra that fails to recognise climate change and the importance of renewable energy. We have had a government for the last six years—and they were in opposition for three years prior to that—that are anti-climate change, anti-renewables and anti-investment into renewables, which means that they are anti-jobs.

When I think of this government's climate change and energy policies, I can't help but think of a novel that many of us may be familiar with, a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes, where the protagonist, Don Quixote, is on his horse fighting windmills that he imagines are massive giants out to destroy him. That's what I see in this government—a government that sees renewables and windmills et cetera as massive giants that are out to destroy them, which is absolutely not true. You can just imagine the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, on his horse with a wooden sword trying to chop down the wonderful windmills we have that create energy, and a whole bunch of MPs and backbenchers riding behind him up the hill to destroy these wonderful works of renewable energy that help reduce our carbon emissions et cetera.

It is a great shame. It's a government that has done nothing in this area. We have seen no national framework for a national policy on energy and renewables. They've spent six years saying that climate change is not a problem and that we should continue with coal. We had a Treasurer that walked into this House with a lump of coal. How embarrassing on the international scale can that be, when other nations around the world are combating and doing everything they can, to see a leader of the government, someone in high office, come into this place, plonk a hunk of coal on the table and say, 'This is the way to go.'

I think most Australians actually get it. Young people get it. I was at a school recently, the Star of the Sea, where a great group of kids were dedicated to the environment. A particular student called Hudson was incredibly passionate about the planet and so were his fellow students. They were genuinely worried about the planet that they would inherit. They spoke to me about it. Hudson spoke about his opposition to Adani and many other things, and he was so impressively engaged with this debate that he had garnered signatures from all others in the community and handed them to us.

We need to invest more money in renewables. We need to create green jobs and projects just like the Weatherill Labor government is doing in South Australia. This government has left the states on their own when it comes to energy policy. They came into government in 2013 promising that energy prices would go down once they removed Labor's policies. What we have seen is a 70 per cent increase in energy prices. It's closer to 70 per cent to 80 per cent increase in energy prices across the nation. Why have we seen that? Because there's been no national framework. There's been no national policy for renewables, so how can you get new industries to invest into the nation and the economy with renewable energy and new technologies et cetera? Therefore we have seen the outflow of many of these businesses. You look at Asia, where trillions of dollars are being spent at the moment in investment in renewables and much more will be spent in this area. We will be missing out. We will be missing out because our government doesn't care.

But in South Australia we've got a 75 per cent target for renewables by 2025; a 25 per cent renewable storage target; a $10 billion investment in low-carbon generations; achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and establishing Adelaide as one of the world's first carbon-neutral cities. This is drawing in investment. We have had people coming in to invest in solar power, battery power and a whole range of other things. This is the way that this federal government should be going—coming up with a national plan that actually encourages business to invest, to create jobs, to have new technologies and to ensure that we save this planet. The reality is you can talk as much as you like about businesses, about jobs, but there will be no businesses and no jobs within a few years, within the generation of our great grandkids. We have a duty as people in this place to ensure that we protect the environment. (Time expired)

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