Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nuclear weapons and climate change are probably the only man-made phenomena capable of destroying life as we know it on earth, but you wouldn't know it from the way this government behaves. Just in the last five years, Australia has gone from being a world leader in tackling climate change to well and truly lagging behind other developed nations. Indeed, we have seen a concerted effort from the Liberal and National parties to dismantle everything and anything that even looks like it would deal with climate change. The carbon price has been destroyed, the Clean Energy Target was kicked around and then stopped in its tracks by the climate wreckers, and it was the same with the National Energy Guarantee.

And now we have learned that the government are going to dismantle the Renewable Energy Target. What are they going to replace it with? Nothing. That's right. We confront the farcical situation where Australia has no climate policy because the government either find it all too hard or don't believe it in the first place. No wonder many people aren't taking seriously the government's claim to be committed to the Paris agreement. This is a national tragedy because if we don't deal with climate change now while we have the chance then nothing else will matter. Surely our children deserve so very much better than this type of behaviour.