Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

So what happens over there? Big business says, ‘Let’s get into nuclear,’ even though in Germany it is more expensive than wind power in 2006. Germany, which has led the world in environmental technological innovation and the export of that technology in the last decade, is about to drop the baton. We should be picking it up. What a great opportunity for this wonderful nation of ours. How well placed we are to be the world leaders, to confront this monstrous spectre of global heating—which hangs across the future of our kids, our grandkids and their kids—and to make a profit out of it and be proud of it. That is what Senator Milne’s motion says: let us grasp this; let us get together the best information in Australia, and elsewhere if necessary, as a guide to where Australian governments should be in the next years, if not decades. Let us understand what is the best energy potential that Australia could be taking up at this time.

But the government is going to vote against it, and, guess what? The opposition says, ‘We are, too.’ I am flabbergasted by that. I find it incomprehensible, but there you go. I congratulate Senator Milne on bringing this motion forward. It is not only a good motion; it is an extremely important search for information, solutions, advantage and prosperity for this nation’s future. I appeal to the opposition to think again and I appeal to the government to think again as well.