Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The craziness I was referring to was that coming from Senator Malcolm Roberts, who believes that climate change does not exist and is a hoax set up by the CIA—craziness indeed! Let me put this to you: this storm was being used for political purposes by people in this chamber to drive their ideological attack against renewable energy. Thankfully, the South Australian public have not bought it. They knew that, in the midst of this storm, when the transmission towers were blown over and the power went out across our state, all this would have happened regardless of whether it was renewable energy, coal-fired power energy or even nuclear energy, because the power was not able to get to the places it needed to.

Above all else, what has been incredibly disappointing in this is to see what Malcolm Turnbull, as the Prime Minister, has done in the days and weeks following this power outage in South Australia. This is a Prime Minister who, only 12 months ago, said that, in order to power our nation into the future, we needed to be investing and believing in and supporting renewable energy and the renewable energy sector. And now we have him out kicking wind energy and the renewable energy sector, when they need the support of our Prime Minister the most. Who is really pulling the strings here? It is former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and, even in this chamber, the likes of Senator Eric Abetz. These are the people who are calling the shots these days in the coalition government and we have a Prime Minister like Malcolm Turnbull who looks nothing more than a fraud today. He is a Prime Minister who said that he believed in renewable energy, that he would do everything he could to support that sector, and now he is kicking—