Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

That was one of the louder contributions we have had in recent days, and the tone of it really underlines what has occurred inside the Liberal Party, which is that the extremists and climate change deniers have taken over the Liberal Party. Senator Joyce cannot disguise his triumphalism. The extremists who deny that climate change exists, the same extremists who delivered this country Work Choices, are now in control of the Liberal Party. If people want to talk about hypocrisy, Senator Joyce, who voted for those extreme industrial relations laws which stripped wages and conditions from working Australians, coming into this chamber and lecturing the Labor Party on protecting working families has got to be the height of hypocrisy. In this government’s term, of course, it was Senator Joyce and his colleagues who voted against the stimulus package, which was about supporting jobs and supporting continued economic activity in Australia at a time when we knew that the global financial crisis was threatening our economic growth. This is the man who now fashions himself as the defender of working Australians, the man who voted to strip wages and conditions from working Australians with Work Choices. You have no answer, Senator, on that point.

What is quite clear also from that rant—and I will come to the issue of climate science shortly, because what the senator is proceeding from is not a concern for working families. What he is proceeding from is that he does not believe that climate change is real.