Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Your government has approved over 30 new coal and gas projects, and now, on the eve of an election and under cover of the budget, you are gutting our environment and climate laws, removing scientific protections against more coal and gas and other corporations and driving an iconic species to extinction. Prime Minister, after three years of broken promises on the environment, why are you now doing what the Leader of the Opposition asked by gutting our climate and environment laws?

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

What absolute nonsense from the member for Melbourne, the leader of a political party that stopped climate action the last time we were in government on this side of the House. They stopped climate action and, as a direct result, led to Tony Abbott sitting in this chair. That's what occurred. But what my government has done proudly is not just have effective climate change targets of 43 per cent by 2030 but a plan to get there through our Capacity Investment Scheme, through our Safeguard Mechanism and by working with business to make sure we get the investment in renewables which is occurring. We're making sure that we do that. Across the board, in the environmental reforms that we have put in place, we are targeting making sure that more of our lands and waters are protected. Just on Saturday we had, through this environment minister, a $250 million announcement to expand land protection in this country so that we work there. Whether it's that, the urban rivers program or the work that we've done in the Murray-Darling Basin, we're making sure that that protection is there.

Right across the board, my government is one that has led on climate and the environment, not just here but in the work that we're doing globally as well. Australia is now out of the naughty corner and back around the table, acting on climate change as part of global efforts and acting on the environment. That's why, also, we follow the science.

The member referred to the issue of Macquarie Harbour. We have committed $37.5 million to maugean skate conservation, including through the successful captive breeding program, remediation and expansion of the oxygenation program in the harbour, which the science tells us is working. What you can't do, and what we will never do, is say: 'We don't care about jobs. We don't care about science. We only just back ideology.' But those opposite in the Tasmanian Greens have never seen a job they don't want to destroy. They don't support the Marinus Link project to provide renewable energy from Tasmania to the north island; that will make a difference. They're opposing wind farms in Tasmania as well, right across the board. Wherever there's a job, they're opposed to it. As a Labor Party, we will always defend jobs but we'll also defend sustainability very proudly.