Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was walking into Parliament House on Sunday just as a gaggle of National Party members were walking out of their four-hour meeting—a meeting where they didn't decide anything because they needed a bit more time. For people who are in government, albeit as the junior coalition partner, for a group who have no policy whatsoever except to resist, at the 11th hour, as the Prime Minister booked his VIP to Glasgow to a crucial global meeting on climate change, they looked pretty relaxed, and that's when it struck me: these people think it's some sort of game; it's just a game to have a bit of fun with; it isn't about, quite frankly, the future of our country and our planet. They looked very relaxed, as though it was a sport, just to secure a few select votes of people in certain parts of the country, who, ironically, are profoundly affected by a failure to have a climate change policy and who are going to bear the brunt of global impacts if the Liberals and Nationals continue to twiddle their thumbs.

These people seem to think it's okay to play a game, and not just this game. It's a game that's not just going to cost in the future; it's already costing this country now. It's costing people in my electorate now. These people seem to think that you're a competent government if you have 21 different energy policies in the course of your government. Seriously! Although, let's be clear: today Australia does not have a coherent energy policy, let alone a policy to tackle climate change. I think we've been a bit gentle in the language about this. I want to make it very clear that over the last decade they have misled the country on the effects of acting on climate change or not acting on climate change. They knew it was a lie to say that there'd be $100 roasts. They knew it was a lie to say electric vehicles would kill the weekend. They knew it was a lie to say that the world's biggest battery was as useful as the Big Banana. They said these things knowingly. They said them knowing that what they were saying was not right, from Tony Abbott through to Scott Morrison. We have been misled as a country.

On this side we have remained firm, knowing how important it is to take action on climate change. People in my electorate know it more than many other places because we live it. This week eight years ago I stood owning one dress, one pair of shoes and one set of underwear, because that's all that was left when my house burnt down in the Winmalee bushfires. I was one of nearly a thousand people. Two hundred houses were destroyed in a single afternoon. We lived that. Two years ago next week the Gospers Mountain fire was started. That was part of a black summer that saw 33 people die and more than 400 people die from inhaling smoke. These are consequences that people are experiencing now. These are not future costs. But the costs are also monetary, because to live in a community like mine it costs you extra if you choose to live there—and we do choose because it's an incredible place. We pay more for insurance.

An honourable member: If you can get it.

If you can get it, as my colleague says, if you can get it for bushfires or floods—and it probably won't be long before we have trouble getting it for storms as well, as climate change makes these extreme weather events even more extreme.

We pay more to build our houses. We don't just have a timber front door. We're not allowed to have a timber front door. In fact my house is not allowed to have a single piece of timber anywhere on its exterior. It's concrete. It's steel. It's corten. It's heavy things. It's got windows like skyscraper windows so that, should a fire like the fierce fire we saw come through, it has greater resilience. That extra cost is not just tens of thousands of dollars but in our case hundreds of thousands of dollars for those in the most intense flame zone areas. It's the same with floods. We also pay through the anxiety and the mental health impacts, and that's a cost that you opposite are responsible for if you fail to act.

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