Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The government has been in office for nearly a decade. The Prime Minister is leaving for Glasgow a week from now but still has no climate policy. Why does the Prime Minister always delay and always blame others and then when he does act why is it always too little too late?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under our government's policies when we were first elected in 2013, we said at that election that we would beat those Kyoto targets, and we did. We beat Kyoto I, we beat Kyoto II and, as we go forward to 2030, our policy on 2030 is very clear: 26-28 per cent. That is the policy that as Prime Minister I took to the last election. That was endorsed by the Australian people at the last election. It is a policy that we will not just meet but beat for 2030. There was another policy. It was put forward by the Labor Party. It was for a 45 per cent reduction in emissions, and the Labor Party have walked away from that policy. They say that's no longer their policy. So there's an obvious question: what is the Labor Party's commitment on 2030? Nobody knows. Nobody knows what their commitment is for 2030. They know what the government's commitment is and they know that, under our policies, emissions have fallen by more than 20 per cent on 2005 levels, which is more than the United States, more than Japan, more than Canada and more than New Zealand—comparable economies to Australia's. Australia's track record on this issue speaks volumes about the achievement of Australians.

Under our policies Australia has one of the highest, if not the highest, rates of rooftop solar in the world. In 2020, Australia installed seven gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. As the minister for energy has reminded the House, in one year under our government's policies, we exceeded the renewable investment of six years under the Labor Party. Our investment is nearly eight times faster per capita than the global average in renewables. It's around eight times faster than New Zealand and Japan and around three times faster than the United States, China, Germany and the European Union. Under our policies, emissions are coming down and jobs are going up. Under our policy, emissions are coming down and there are a million people now working in manufacturing. Under the Labor Party, one in eight manufacturing jobs were gone. That's what a carbon tax does. That's what punishing taxes do.

Under our policies, we're getting emissions down. They're falling, and we're putting employment up. We're seeing exports go up. We're seeing the resources industry, the natural gas industry, the LNG industry—all of these sectors— critical minerals, clean energy supply chains being established under the policies of our government. Under those opposite there is no plan, no idea. (Time expired)