Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spent most of my Sunday at the Sydney Road Street Party, chatting to the people of my electorate of Wills. I put up a board near the stall, with issues of importance marked on it, and invited people to place a little red sticker next to the issue that they were most concerned about. At the end of the day the board was covered with stickers and, overwhelmingly, climate change was the top issue of concern, because in Wills people are doing their bit. They are conscious of their impact. My electorate has one of the highest uptakes for solar panels for residences. Some businesses are powered entirely by solar power, like Impact Digital, a printing company in Brunswick. People cycle, they use public transport and they try to limit using plastic or disposable products. Every little bit counts—the one-percenters matter.

But climate change is a challenge that goes far beyond individual or community efforts. It requires a committed national approach. People who are admirably making changes to their daily lives are being let down by the Liberal-National government. In contrast, Labor is committed to net zero emissions by 2050, a target rejected by the Liberal-National government. Labor is committed to a clean energy future, investing in wind and solar power. But, unbelievably, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction announced just last week that the Liberal-National government would not fund solar or wind as part of their so-called technology plan. If we are to have any moral authority on the international stage to ask the big emitters to reduce their emissions, Australia needs to lead. We need a government with a plan to reduce emissions. A future Labor government will deliver real action on climate change.