Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by Senator Cormann to a question without notice asked today relating to the Prime Minister.

What an absolute joke. What a farce. Earlier today, I asked a question of the minister representing the so-called Prime Minister in this place: 'Why did our Prime Minister feel that the House of Representatives was the appropriate place for him to criticise the young people of Australia?' Why did he feel that it was his role to tell thousands of young people, who are concerned about the impact of climate change on their future, that they should simply sit down, shut up and go back to school? And what did we hear from this crumbling, directionless, miserable excuse of a flee-bitten administration? What did we hear? 'Kids should be in school.' That was the only response given. I'll tell you something: the young people of Australia look to the actions of this government in this place and they are revolted. They see behaviour which, if it was used in their classroom, they would be admonished for and expelled for, and yet it is part of the course in this place.

They see a government willing to roll out the red carpet to the coal barons and the gas merchants, who are willing to chop and blast and bench their future, their environment, to make a quick buck. They look to these things and they are revolted. They demand of us that we work for them and that we hold clearly in our mind in every action that we take that our role here is to serve the young people of Australia and create a better future for them. They are connected, they hear what we say in here, they watch us closely. They can see very clearly that when the Prime Minister so patronisingly dismisses the concerns of young people when it comes to climate change, when he drags himself into this building holding a lump of coal like a talisman, he does so at the behest of his donors. He does so because he knows that to do any differently is to be unable to fund his election campaigns and to be unable to plaster the airwaves and the television screens with the cruel, racist, xenophobic nonsense which now comprises an election campaign run by the Liberal Party.

The moral compass of this government was sold off long ago to the highest bidders, to the Gina Rineharts and Andrew Forrests, who so covet the wealth of my state and who right now prowl the halls of my state parliament singing the siren song of a fracking industry that will turn the water to poison. The young people of this nation look to this chamber. They plead with us to put them first and to act, for once, in their interests. And once again they have been shown that this administration has no desire to hear them. Shame on the lot of you. When election day comes, when your rendezvous with defeat is upon you, you will know how sorely you have underestimated the young people of this nation.

Question agreed to.