Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

After eight years in office, there is no climate policy. The way this PM works, it's like he's not in charge. Events just unfold around him, and all he can do in response is come up with a clever slogan, a stunt or, perhaps, a fear campaign. He doesn't do the hard work that our country needs to set us on the right path, to put the plan in place and to deal with the most pressing issue of our time. Instead, this week he is being led by the National Party room, who pretend they've had four hours to consider the most pressing issue of our time. They haven't had four hours; they've had more than a decade. They've had eight years in office. This is a farce. Apparently, net zero wasn't even discussed in the Liberal-National Party room today. The PM is talking like he might want net zero but is not doing the work to get us there. We can't trust he'll do the work to get us there. He's talking the talk, but there is nothing we see to back this up.

In this country, we have wasted more than a decade on the climate wars. The IPCC report makes it very clear that the window is closing. If we do not take significant and serious action now, we will miss that window, and the consequences are there for all of us. We will not limit warming to the level that we need for us all to have a future. Those are real consequences for all of us. There are real economic consequences on the table for all of us. The jobs and the industries of the future—the jobs, industries and investment that we should have right now—are being lost in this country and are going offshore right now because this government and this Prime Minister cannot put a credible climate plan together. That's what's going on under this government.

The PM's leadership failures do not just include his inability to do the hard work to put this country on the right track. It's also his inability to bring this country together to set out a plan that works for all of us and a future that all Australians can get behind. Instead, this Prime Minister allows members of his party room, senior members of his government, to stoke division in our country. He allows them to set up this false binary between regional areas and city areas to pretend that only people in regional areas are affected by climate change and only people in the city care about climate change. It's just not the case.

Here's what the Deputy Prime Minister had had to say about my hometown of Melbourne. He said he 'couldn't really give a—expletive—' about Melbourne's pandemic challenges, and, when talking about our city, he said:

You can almost smell the burning flesh from here.

Well, I can tell the Deputy Prime Minister that people in my electorate do give an—expletive—about the jobs and the livelihoods of people in regional Australia. They get that the transition in this country has to support new opportunities and new industries in those regions. What they don't see from this government is the leadership and the plan that will get us there, and what they don't appreciate is the suggestion that their concerns are, somehow, of a lesser order and are not worthy of being considered as part of this debate. That is what they are hearing from this government this week in this place.

People in my electorate get up every day, they go to work, they work hard, they look after the kids and they pay their mortgages. Senator Canavan is happy for these people to pay more for their mortgages, because he has an ideological problem with us acting on climate change. They need a leader. They need a government that is prepared to do the hard work for this entire country to put us on the track that we need to be on. They do not need a government playing the politics of fear and division. They do not need a Prime Minister who is about slogans and stunts but who can't follow through with a plan.

It's been eight years. The kids who started primary school when this government first got elected are in high school. Others have finished high school. It's those kids' future we are talking about. This government has to come up with a credible plan. (Time expired)

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