Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is not my second first speech but, nonetheless, I rise to speak on the Coal-Fired Funding Prohibition Bill 2017, which is a Greens bill that would stop public money going to coal-fired power.

It's hard to believe we're having this debate in this day and age, when the science of climate change is abundantly clear and when the price of renewables and the ability of renewables to meet our power needs are beyond reproach. Yet here we have a government that claim to be free marketeers, when it suits them, and they want to give public money to prop up coal-fired power. They either want to build it themselves, as many of my Queensland colleagues have been pushing to do, or they want to refurbish old clunkers, which should be retired and replaced with clean energy.

We Greens have come to this place with a bill to say no public money for coal-fired power. It is past the time—