Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

It's the job of the government of Australia to leave the country stronger than when they found it. It's the job of the Prime Minister of Australia to tackle tough issues, to prepare Australia for the future, to make us stronger as he does so, to argue for things which are tough and right. That's a thread which has joined many prime ministers, from Curtin and Chifley fighting to win World War 2 and then build a better peace; through Gough Whitlam arguing for a better, fairer country with Medibank, Malcolm Fraser arguing that Australia should playing a leading role in tackling apartheid, Hawke and Keating building a better country, and John Howard taking a crisis and arguing for more gun control in Australia, at great cost to himself; to Rudd and Gillard building the National Disability Insurance Scheme and apologising to our First Peoples. That's what good prime ministers do.

Over the last week, we've been reminded that this Prime Minister is not fit to be compared with those holders of that office—not fit to be compared with his predecessors. This week the Prime Minister has shown us that when an issue requires leadership he's just not there—and climate change requires leadership. Just like when the bushfires required leadership, just like when ensuring Australians had the world's best access to vaccines required leadership—just like on those issues—Australians look to their Prime Minister and they find no leader in the Lodge. They find a vacuum of leadership in our country.

The Prime Minister likes to declare that things are not a race, but the world is in a race—to net zero. We need to be in a race because that's what all the science shows us is absolutely necessary to hold the world to 1.5 degrees of warming and avoid all the catastrophic consequences of not doing so. But also it's a race to net zero to ensure that our country, our people, can get the thousands of jobs that are going to be created in this renewables revolution. Global capital is moving rapidly towards renewable energy, and we have a once-in-a-generation chance to ensure that our workers and our technologies are leading that race to zero, leading that transformation for our planet. But this opportunity is falling through the fingers of the government as we speak. They're spending all their time not setting a course to grab those opportunities but arguing about whether we're even going to turn up at the race, whether we're even going to be at the starting line. After 423 weeks in office, and just two weeks before the most important climate conference we've seen, the government are deciding whether we even care, whether they even have a climate policy. After 70,000 hours in office, they need a few more four-hour meetings to decide whether we're even going to be in the race. After 21 goes at an energy policy, they want us to believe that the 22nd one is the one with which they'll get it just right, after all these attempts.

If there's one thing that has been welcome this week—just one thing—it's that at least some Liberals have recognised and grasped the fact that action on climate change is good for the economy. For almost two decades their entire political model has been based on arguing that action on climate change costs jobs. It has always been a lie and it's an even bigger lie now.

An opposition member: Was it the BCA?

It could be because the BCA has told them that there are 195,000 jobs to be created, or it could be because the BCA, with the ACTU, the World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Conservation Foundation, has found there are 395,000 jobs to be created from clean energy exports. It's a good thing that some Liberals have recognised this. But there's one thing they haven't given up on: dividing Australians between each other. They're addicted to dividing Australians between rural and regional Australians and inner-city dwellers. They're addicted to toxic politics.

I want to say something about rural and regional Australians. They know this land. They know this country. They live on this country and they see it changing before their eyes. They've got a connection to this country and they want to see this issue tackled. They want to see a policy to protect our land. I could talk about the facts and the figures. I could talk about the fact that, of the 250,000 jobs to be created in Australia by action on climate change, 185,000 are in Queensland, or that 13,000 are in Central Queensland, or that 28,000 are in other areas of regional Queensland, or that 16,000 are in the Hunter, or that 6,000 are in northern Tasmania, or that 47,000 are in regional Western Australia. They're the facts. But more important than that is the knowledge of our workers in our regions who have created energy in Australia for decades, who know how to make energy and who want to make energy into the future. They know that they want to manufacture energy and renewable energy infrastructure, and we want them to do it too. They are being denied these opportunities by a government with their heads in the sand. They want to know that Australia's jobs opportunity will be taken. They want to know that Australia's opportunity to be a regional powerhouse in renewable energy will be taken. But it won't be taken by this government.

We know that the regions which have powered Australia for so long—those with the access to the ports, the railway lines and the electricity grid—are the same areas that will power Australia and export energy into the future. We will continue to be an export energy powerhouse with the right policies. But this five-minutes-to-midnight conversion by the Prime Minister is not to be believed. This is the same man who has led Australia down a policy black hole for too long. We know what's driving him because his own colleagues have told us. The Liberal MP said it well when they said, 'At the heart of the Morrison government is a focus group.' It's not driven by the need to navigate a massive transformation. This is a government and a prime minister driven only by what is popular and political in the moment. They're not for the future, they don't have the vision of those other prime ministers imagining a new Australia, guiding the course and taking the people with them. They're just focused on the politics.

The Australian people are entitled to ask: 'Who is the right party to guide Australia through this transition? Which is the right party to take this opportunity?' They are entitled to conclude that in this building there is a guilty party, and that guilty party sits opposite. That is the guilty party which has avoided the opportunities for eight long years. There are no innocents on that side of the chamber. There are no innocents; they are all equally guilty. When the Prime Minister was declaring that electric vehicles would 'end the weekend', he was guilty. When he was comparing the world's biggest battery at that time with a big banana and a big prawn, he was guilty. When his hand-picked member for Hughes—he may have left the party but the Prime Minister's still responsible for him—was undermining the science of climate change, he was guilty. When the member for Wentworth was comparing electric vehicles to communism, he was guilty. When the member for Goldstein, who has joined the executive, was calling for Australia to leave the Kyoto protocol, he was guilty. When the member for North Sydney was recommending that this House not even debate the Zali Steggall bill, he was guilty. When the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction, who is at the table, was arguing that wind farms are injurious to health and claiming that there was too much wind and solar in our grid, he was guilty.

Opposition members interjecting—

He is guilty of many other things as well; I do concede the point. When the member for Mackellar was arguing that electric vehicle policy was like the pink batts policy, he was guilty. There are no innocents on that side of the chamber. Their voting record is the same. The member for Goldstein's record is the same as the member for Dawson's. The member for Wentworth's voting record is the same as Senator Canavan's. Not only are their voting records the same but also there is one other thing that unites the other side. They've had their dysfunction and division and we've all seen it. The Australian people have seen it played out. There is one thing that will unite them: dishonesty about climate change. As the election approaches, we've already seen the Prime Minister explain—I thought, very compellingly—that their net zero is completely different to our net zero. It's a very different net zero. The other members were lining up behind him to cheer him on, saying: 'Yes! We've never been at war with Oceania—no, it's a completely different war. It's a completely different net zero.' That's the one thing that unites them: their addiction to power and to being dishonest to get it.

So, when the Australian people make this judgement about who is best to manage this transition, they can make the judgement that the guilty party is not the best party to manage the transition. The guilty party is the party that deserves to be voted out.

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