Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will withdraw if that is the case. I could think of other things, but that felt like it would suffice.

In 2008, in the very first speech that I read in here, I told an apocryphal story that seemed appropriate at the time. It was about a group of washer women at a riverbank who noticed a child floating past on the river, in trouble. One of them wades in and rescues the child. A short while later they see another child floating past and go out and rescue that one. Then another one floats by, and another. Before long, they are overwhelmed. Then one of the women turns and makes her way up the riverbank. The other women demand: 'Comrade, where are you going? We need you here.' Without looking back she says, 'I'm going to find whoever it is who's throwing them in.' And I feel as though I have spent with my colleagues five years in this place working my way upstream to find out who it is throwing these kids into harm's way—who is making these repetitive, short-term decisions that set such long-term disasters into motion. And here you are; we found you.

If anything that we have said tonight reaches any members of the coalition with a flicker of conscience, join us when we put this bill to a vote, cross the floor and vote for a bill that will give us a fighting chance to meet the challenges that our country has only just begun to confront. You can join the Greens. You can join the Labor Party. You will also be joining the solar industry—companies like SolarReserve, which just established an office in Perth and is hoping to roll out some of the projects at scale like those they do in the western part of the United States. You will be joining the wind energy developers. You will be joining the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. You will be joining campaigners and ordinary people all over the planet who are throwing everything they have at changing course while we still can. So, when we commit this bill to a vote, I know where I will be sitting. I thank the chamber.