Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Three years ago, the Prime Minister was greeted by laughter when he told the Liberal conference there are no factions in the Liberal party. In some ways, what he said then is true today: there are no longer merely factions; there are factions of subfactions and there is the kind of vicious, internecine conflict that would put the Bolsheviks to shame. I think Australians are genuinely embarrassed about the brawl that is playing out in the open, and they have a right to be angry—angry about the shameless, naked ambition and the disregard for the public that has been shown by many in the Liberals' party room. There has been a lot of drama, and it's exhausting.

It feels a little bit strange to be having a debate late on Thursday afternoon about energy policy after all that has gone on. But that is exactly what we ought to be talking about and that is exactly what has brought us to this point, because it is climate change that defines the conflict in the Liberal Party and their inability to manage energy policy over the last five years. It is climate change that will continue to drive the coalition's inability to govern, and it is climate change that represents one of the most pressing policy challenges for our nation. Climate change lies at the heart of this whole thing, and that has been apparent for weeks. The government's failure to appreciate the seriousness of the climate change challenge underlies and underpins five years of policy failure in energy. It has been five years of total and absolute failure.

What has happened over the last couple of weeks is that all of that has bubbled to the surface. We can now actually see what has been going on. We can see who has been saying it, we can see who the deniers are and we can see that what they have been determined to do, year after year under Mr Abbott and under Mr Turnbull, is wreck any prospect of a meaningful response to climate change that deals coherently with the energy system. The discussion about the NEG in the coalition party room looks much less like a discussion or a negotiation and basically just looks like extortion. It has been absolutely extraordinary over the last couple of weeks. The member for Capricornia came out and explained to everybody that it was thanks to the rebels that the changes have been made. There was change after change to a policy that the Prime Minister himself had taken into COAG and had sought to negotiate with state premiers. Well, weren't they right? Why would they negotiate with this group of clowns? What a ludicrous failure to be able to deliver anything coherent whatsoever.

What became apparent over the last couple of weeks was that there was absolutely nothing the Prime Minister could do to appease the hard Right. There was nothing he could do. There are a lot of dissenters who actually have been unable to explain in any coherent way to the public what their objection to the current Prime Minister is in relation to energy. It is possible, knowing some of these people, that it's just a failure of comprehension. Most of them certainly seem unacquainted with the basic facts about the cost of new energy supply and the way that that might play out in the energy market over the coming years. The member for Hughes actually had to be corrected this morning on television, during a live interview, about what the coalition's energy policy is—or perhaps it might be better to say was.

You've got to suspect that nothing the Prime Minister could give them would stop them asking for more. He has given the deniers, the hard Right in their party, exactly what they demanded. Under the latest round of policy, there would not be a single new renewable project built for a decade. But it's not enough, is it? It's not enough for Mr Pasin, not enough for Mr Hastie, not enough for Mr Abbott and not enough for Mr Kelly—not enough at all. They don't want someone who has to put his principles aside in order to take no action on climate. They want someone whose principles demand that he take no action on climate change. They want a climate denier in the Lodge, and they will not stop until such a person is there. This is an absolute disgrace. It is an absolute betrayal of the interests of the Australian people.

These people are wreckers. They are ideologues of the worst kind. They are intent on sabotaging this country and its energy system because they insist on seeing climate change as part of the culture wars. They would prefer to fight on climate and battle on rather than deal with the facts and see climate change and energy policy as the serious policy challenge that it is. It is total economic vandalism. History will not look kindly on this government. It will not look kindly on this government and the boosters of this government outside the parliament. Their inability to provide a coherent response to climate change, integrated within energy policy, that will give the energy sector and the investors in that sector the certainty that they require to invest in the energy market is absolutely a dereliction of duty. It should disqualify this crowd from government for a generation.

There is evidence of climate change all around us. In New South Wales, 100 per cent of the state is in drought. We have bushfires raging in the middle of winter. The ice sheet in Greenland is breaking up. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that it is caused by mankind. Yet these people refuse to act.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Here in the chamber this evening, we've got Senator Macdonald, the failed preselection candidate from Queensland, who sits over there calling out over and over again—