Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Today's report from the IPCC is a sobering reminder of the urgency of addressing climate change, and the Australian people understand there is a need to act. Last May, they sent a clear message that the decade of denial needed to end and we needed to act on climate change, that we needed to act in order to seize the opportunities for job creation in the new industries that will come. Those opposite had a decade of refusing to acknowledge that the cheapest form of new investment is renewables. We had, time after time, people standing up here talking about how Liddell was going to stay open and all these things were going to happen, and none of it did, of course. They talked about building a new coal-fired power station at Collinsville. They funded a study with the actual proponents of that private-sector project, using taxpayer funds, but, of course, that didn't happen either.

Business wants certainty, and that's why they want the safeguard mechanism to be carried. How do we do that? We need the mechanism, which was in fact put in place originally by the former government. But they are so committed to saying no to everything and becoming a 'no-alition' they're even saying no to their own policies.

See this speech in context