Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the Prime Minister and the entire Labor caucus coming to hear my words of wisdom—it's very much appreciated! And I appreciate the fact that the Prime Minister does have a mandate to bring this to the parliament. I appreciate that, and I accept that. But I also appreciate the fact that the minister for climate, the minister responsible for this legislation, said that it wasn't necessary to bring it into the parliament.

Back on 1 November 2019 the National Party had a meeting at Nagambie, and Kevin Sheedy, the very much respected Australian football coach and social commentator, had quite a tome that he brought to his speech. It was a book about all of the worst disasters that had struck humankind since mankind first started walking on two legs. He referred to this book and he said: 'I want you to know that not one of these disasters has ever hit Australia. It's a book about all the deaths, all the tragedies and all the calamities that have occurred, and it doesn't mention Australia once.'

I have here Courage in Crisis, a book published in 2011 that talks of the worst disasters in Australia's history. It talks of the 12,000-plus people who lost their lives in the 1918-19 influenza epidemic, which we heard much about during the COVID global pandemic; it talks of the 1,013 people who died in the 1946-55 polio epidemic which hit Australia; it talks of the 727 people who died in 1941 when the HMAS Sydney and Kormoran had their famous battle in the Indian Ocean near Shark Bay; it talks of the 550 people who died nationwide between 1900 and 1910 from the bubonic plague; it talks of the 438 people who died between December 1938 and February 1939 from the heatwave that struck Victoria, and no-one mentioned climate change; it talks of the 437 people who died in the 1895-96 heatwave which struck south-eastern Australia; it talks of the 410 people who died on 4 March 1899 from Cyclone Mahina in Bathurst Bay in Queensland; and it talks of the 406 people who died in 1845 in the Cataraqui shipwreck off King Island in Tasmania. My point is that they are the worst disasters that have struck Australia and not one of them mentions climate change.

Government membe rs interjecting—

You may laugh and mock and knock, but, if you were listening to some of the commentators, you would think that each and every day we are losing people to climate change, when, in fact, what it is doing is causing mental anguish amongst our children. But don't take my word for it; the renowned peer-reviewed journal The LancetPlanetary Health says:

Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people—

and, yes, I'm not a denier; I accept it—

yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response.

I was just at a book launch at which I heard General Patton's quote: 'If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking.' That is so true. We talk of the climate wars, and again it is probably somewhat of an exaggeration to use the word 'wars' when we're talking about the national discussion about climate. It's not a war; a war is what is happening in Ukraine at the moment with Russia's invasion.

It's good to have a sensible, rational debate about action against climate change and what we're doing about it. I heard the Prime Minister in question time just today talk about the 604,000 jobs that will be created through the government's climate response. Five out of six, he claims, will be in regional Australia.

So many of those opposite are always talking about their people being concerned about what's being done about the climate, their people being concerned about what the future holds and their people being concerned about their children and grandchildren. I respect that—I do. But it is regional Australia that will bear the brunt of this if we get it wrong and if we push too hard too early.

The Prime Minister just mentioned this. Why aren't we manufacturing more? Indeed, I tend to think that the mining industry gets demonised when it comes to action on climate. We know BHP and a lot of the other big miners are taking action and taking it in their stride, but each and every one of us has one of these—a mobile phone—and the elements of mobile phones are rare earths obtained through mining.

It's all well and good to talk about wind farms and solar power. I have farming families at the moment who are desperately worried about converting prime agricultural land in and around Wagga Wagga to massive solar farms, foreign-owned solar farms. I talk to the Goodwins, the Kirkpatricks, the Martins, the Killens, the Roaches and many others besides who are very worried about prime agricultural land being taken up by solar farms.

The solar farms do not have to go through local government approval processes, because they are considered state strategically important. They only have to be ticked off by the state government. Therefore, the local council, in this case Wagga Wagga City Council, doesn't even get a say. Yet these farming families—some of whom have been there for generations—are very concerned, not just about the appearance of these solar farms and what they will do to the landscape, but about taking away the food and fibre production of some of the best farming land you will find, not just in Australia but, indeed, in the world. They want a moratorium placed on it.

We should be very mindful and very careful about where we place our solar farms. But make no mistake, they will all be in regional Australia. I appreciate that the Prime Minister extols the virtue of what he is doing—and good on him for that. He is, after all, the Prime Minister. But there won't be any farms built in Marrickville or Newtown or anywhere in Grayndler. There will not be any solar farms. It will all be occurring in regional Australia. I appreciate too he and others, including the health minister, say that it is going to provide jobs and opportunities for Australians, but I do query the 600,000-plus number.

In December 2021 Labor made a promise to cut power bills. We were approaching election time. We were all wondering when the election might or might not be called. Whilst Labor made this promise—they said that they would cut power bills whilst reducing emissions—these bills only legislate one of those targets. That promise to reduce household power bills by $275 by 2025 is the first broken promise of this government. It is a fallacy. They won't do that.

What will happen is that the Labor Party will be acquiescing to the Greens through this, and on other measures that will come forward as a result of this bill passing the House of Representatives and this bill passing the Senate—as it truly will. The Labor Party, the Albanese-Bandt government, will only legislate the emissions target and not the price target. Who pays? How do we get there? They're questions which people right throughout our nation are asking.

One of this government's first acts in office was to draw up a new nationally determined contribution, or NDC, the formal statement of Australia's commitment to the target under the Paris Agreement.

I know they went around, and so many candidates did, throughout the election campaign and absolutely demonised what we had done about emissions as a government over those nine years. We met and we beat all of our international targets. We absolutely met all of our obligations, but we did it in a responsible and practical way. We did it so that we didn't place the mining industry at risk. We did it in such a way that we didn't place our prime agricultural land at risk. We did it in such a way that power prices were coming down. We did it in such a way that jobs weren't being lost. We did it in such a way that people had a certainty about their futures.

When former Prime Minister Scott Morrison went to Glasgow he had that net zero target by 2050, which was what had always been called for. Then it became net zero by 2035 and then net zero by 2030. Who knows what the future will hold when the member for Melbourne decides that he will tell the Prime Minister, 'We have got some new target now' and that is the rub. That is the big concern for regional Australians who, like me, doubt the 604,000 jobs that are supposedly going to be created. They do worry about wind farms and solar farms taking up prime agricultural land, and I appreciate exactly where they're coming from.

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