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

I understand that. The opposition is right: this package will put the nation into debt—further debt. But I suspect that if the Howard government had stayed in power at the last election we would be doing exactly the same thing here in the parliament right now. The fact is, the opposition wants a multibillion dollar rescue package, just not this one because it has the government’s imprimatur.

The Greens, for all of that, have negotiated with the government. The outcomes have been extremely welcome. I heard the opposition complain yesterday that the Greens component of this package has double the jobs dividend of the rest of the package. I can tell you that that is exactly where we wanted to go in our negotiations: creating jobs in Australia, particularly local jobs and particularly green skill jobs, because that is where the economy will be going in the future.

For the first time getting the national government to focus on energy efficiency and water efficiency in new housing stock is a real breakthrough. It has been previously left to the states. We only had to listen to the federal bureaucracy before the Senate committee last Friday to understand that there was almost zero recognition of global housing standards on such things as insulation, solar hot water heating and—