Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Housing affordability and green jobs do go together. One of the important sets of green jobs that goes hand in hand with housing affordability has been helped by the funding that has gone to green communities so that people can lower their household carbon footprint.

Opposition senators interjecting—

That is just one of many, many different types of green jobs that exist in our community. Green jobs in this country are very much part of our future because we know that without a carbon price we will be leaving ourselves behind the technological change that is happening in the most advanced economies in the world. You need only to look at countries like Germany to know how far they have come in green jobs because they have put a price on carbon. In this country we know that jobs will be left far behind without pricing carbon. Why do we know that? We know that it will become more expensive to transition in the future if we fail to do so now. That is why in pricing carbon we are setting up the economy for the future. We are creating the jobs of the future, because we know that we will lose jobs in the future if we do not make this transition. The clean energy future plan is one of the most significant innovation funds that this nation has ever seen. It is all about jobs for the future—jobs in my home state of Western Australia, jobs in wind farms, jobs in industries like Alcoa. When we talk about green jobs, we mean the kinds of changes that big industry needs to make to adjust to the price of carbon. These jobs exist everywhere. They exist in accounting. They exist not only in carbon accounting but also in accounting that looks at how you change your emissions profile throughout a plant. They exist in engineering. They exist in making everything we do smarter and better. Indeed, they exist in plumbing. They exist in electrical and other trades.

We know that if we do not take these steps to move forward on carbon, if we do not price carbon in this nation, we will destroy jobs in this country. When we talk about green jobs, we are talking about jobs that are embedded in every part of the economy. We are indeed talking about environmental educators and we are also talking about plumbers and electricians. We are talking about everyone who is about helping this nation manage its environmental footprint. There are jobs in agriculture. There are jobs in working out how we sequester carbon into our soils right around this country. I have heard those opposite talk about this many times. They are actually quite interested in it.

It is really quite a cheeky question to ask: 'Where are these jobs?' And it can only come from someone like Senator Bernardi, who does not believe in climate change at all. He is completely cynical about it. Why would he think that such jobs need to exist in this country? He would have no idea why they would need to exist, because to him they are made-up and irrelevant jobs. But I can tell you that these jobs are very, very real. These are the kinds of jobs that we must create. Frankly, we need to get the whole of the planet working on creating these jobs. These are the jobs of the future that will help us reduce the globe's greenhouse emissions. These are the kinds of jobs that will help us save our future and our planet. Be it on Senator Bernardi's head if he thinks that these are just made-up jobs and not real, if he does not know what they are and if he asks such a simple and, in my opinion, stupid question. Green jobs are at the very heart of our nation's future and our nation's economy.