Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

On New Year's Day 2020, this city, my beloved home city of Canberra, had the worst air quality in the world. Bushfire smoke had blanketed the city, and what being outdoors did for your lungs was the same as what smoking a pack of cigarettes a day would do. Increased severe weather events had been warned about since Ross Garnaut's work commissioned by the Rudd and Gillard governments. Yet Prime Minister Morrison denied that there was any link between bushfires and climate change. It led to countries around the world shaking their heads at the inaction from the Morrison government on climate change. In 2020, the Climate Change Performance Index put Australia dead last for our climate policies.

We've seen from the Morrison government inaction and denial. The former Prime Malcolm Turnbull has said he puts it down to the 'toxic combination of the fossil fuel lobby, right-wing partisan media, and right-wing sentiment'. He was so outraged by his former party having been captured by the climate denialists that he supported an independent candidate for the New South Wales Upper Hunter by-election over a National Party candidate.

As has been pointed out by economist Nicki Hutley, when other countries put in place their COVID response packages they used that as a chance to accelerate the shift towards renewables. Nicki Hutley's analysis suggests that the average national spending from COVID recovery packages on clean energy was 20 per cent. In Australia, it wasn't 20 per cent. It wasn't two per cent. It wasn't even 0.2 per cent. It was 0.02 per cent. That's how little the Australian government grabbed the opportunity to use COVID fiscal stimulus in order to encourage the shift towards renewables. As Ms Hutley noted, the word 'renewables' didn't even appear in the government's policy documents. The former prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, has noted that there hasn't been new major infrastructure investment in long-term storage projects since he announced Snowy Hydro 2.0 and the Basslink plan. So it's not just this side of the House that is deeply disappointed with the lack of action on climate change; it is former prime minister Malcom Turnbull, who, as history records, lost his job not once but twice because he wanted to drag his party into acting on climate change.

Acting on climate change is what we've seen from sensible conservatives in Britain, Germany and New Zealand, to name just a few countries. But, in Australia, the Liberal and National parties have taken the Trumpist path, choosing not to act. We heard from the resources minister the other day that solar panels do not work at night. This is a bloke who must be surprised every time he has a shower on a day when it's not raining outside. The fact is, battery technologies—

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