Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can hear people laughing. Well, you're laughing on the other side of the chamber, and long may you laugh over there, friends. Laugh over there for as long as you want, because we on this side of the House, on the side of the treasury bench, understand that Australians' expectations have moved on from your outdated ways—or from their outdated ways, Deputy Speaker. We are here as the party of government, working collaboratively and constructively with the crossbench and even—despite what they tell you, despite some of the public ranting and raving that the Greens have been doing recently—with the Greens, because we want to get this done. We want to take the biggest step forward in emissions reduction policy in our country's history.

We need this safeguard mechanism to work. We want to make sure that this scheme is an effective one to actually reduce our emissions, to hit our emissions reduction targets and to give businesses certainty so that we can produce materials like batteries, wind farms and solar panels. Ideally, we will manufacture some of them in Australia, but that is a separate piece of work being led by the excellent minister for industry. We need to get this program in place so that we can actually hit our emissions reduction targets.

So I would urge all members of this place, including those who helped design some of the aspects of this scheme themselves, to get on board or forever be consigned to the wrong side of history on climate action. People are going to judge them at the next election: did they do one thing in opposition to help tackle climate change? Did they support one out of the many things that we put forward in this place to help tackle emissions? From the responses that I've received while making these remarks, my hopes are not too high. But we on this side of the House know that we must do our bit. We must reduce our emissions. This policy, the safeguard mechanism policy, both through this legislation and through the regulations that will be outlined by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, is the single largest lever the government has ever tried to pull in Australia's history on emissions reduction. It is one that we must get right. It is one that we must get going in the interests of our nation.

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