Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Dangerous Dan, the member for Wannon, over here wants to know what Rewiring the Nation will do. Here's the tip: if you don't have a connector between the place where you're generating the energy and the place where you're using it, it doesn't work, sunshine. It doesn't work. That's why we are rewiring the nation. It is exactly what industry is after. This mob had the option to do it for nine long years, but, instead of fighting for the Australian people, they were fighting amongst themselves, and we are seeing the result—

Opposition mem bers interjecting—

They're still at it. They are still in denial. Listen to them. They are still shouting at the wind and arguing amongst themselves. They can't land an energy policy. They couldn't land one in government, and they've certainly got no hope of landing one in opposition, particularly when you've got the chief clan running their energy and economic policy.

Australians have hope that we are going to put all this behind us. We have policy certainty, we have legislated the targets, we are working with industry to ensure that we can kickstart legislation, we are working with manufacturers who know where the future is in this area, and we will ensure that, from the very beginning to the very end, we have a supply chain of renewable energy and there are jobs in it. This is the thing that these numbskulls over there could never get through their thick heads: there are jobs in renewable energy. There are jobs in the regions in renewable energies, and the people in the regions know it.

At the run-up to the last election, they were running these arguments in their inner-city seats, and they lost them; and the next mob will be regional Australia.

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