Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister: how will the passage of the safeguard mechanism help Australia achieve our climate change targets, provide business with certainty and build a better future?

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

I thank the member for Higgins for her question and for her advocacy. One of the reasons why the member for Higgins is sitting here in this chamber as the best ever member for Higgins is because she understood, like a majority of her constituents who sent her here, that climate change was an issue that had to be dealt with and that it had to be dealt with in a practical way that made a difference. That's why, after a wasted decade, today is indeed a good day. It is a good day for our environment but a good day for our economy as well. It's a win for every Australian who voted for real action on climate change.

The fact is that we received an endorsement at the election to move to enshrine a 43 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050 and to put Australia on a realistic path to get there. But these numbers are only the what. The how is the safeguard mechanism. We recognise that business needs certainty and stability, which is why the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia and individual businesses in this country were crying out for this legislation to be carried.

I want to congratulate and thank the minister for energy, but I also want to thank every member of the crossbench, including the Greens political party, for being prepared to come up with a real, practical solution, for not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good in their own views, which they have.

The fact is that we want to move Australia forward. Those opposite cannot move past their pathology of political conflict. But this legislation is Australia's chance to move past them, to move past the decade of denial that we saw from those opposite, where 22 energy policies were announced and none were delivered. We now have the opportunity to put that wasted decade behind us with greater investment in the cheapest form of new energy—that is, renewables. We can be a renewable energy superpower. We can take advantage of the fact that we live in the region with the fastest growth in human history. This is good for jobs, good for our economy and also good for our environment.