Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

This is a motion that asks this chamber to reflect on the performance of this parliament in managing energy policy and climate policy over the last decade. And it's not surprising that, once again, speakers from the coalition and speakers from the Greens combine to shut this down. They combine to say, 'Oh no, we don't want to talk about this.' And I wouldn't want to talk about it either, because the history is shameful. Ten years later—10 years after we had a chance to put in place a lasting, comprehensive, whole-of-economy approach to deal with both energy and emissions—energy policy is in a shambles. Emissions are going up and the government's own data shows that there is no sign of those emissions coming down. Prices are going up. Families are feeling it. And every day of delay means that the businesses which ought to be investing in new capability, in new energy infrastructure and in clean energy infrastructure that will provide good, secure jobs for Australian workers aren't investing, because there is no policy in place. And it is to the eternal shame of those sitting opposite that they've been unable to deliver this over the last six years.

It's not terribly surprising, in their case, because climate is the thing that continues to divide. They cannot reach an agreement. Only this weekend Malcolm Turnbull was out talking to the faithful, urging them to ignore Scott Morrison's advice that they all be quiet Australians, urging them to speak up and urging members of the Liberal Party to stand up for their values in relation to climate action. But I don't see that happening. I don't see this being resolved because this is the issue that divides the coalition party room. This is the issue that they can't fix, and this is why energy prices will continue to remain too high and our emissions will continue to go up and up: because they are a shambles.

But why don't the Greens party want to talk about this? The Greens party have never wanted to talk about this. The Labor Party are quite happy to talk about the things that go wrong. We have an open conference. Everyone can rock up and everyone can see it on television. When we do a review of our election performance, we put it in the public domain because we believe in openness. We think democracy thrives on openness: not so the Greens. I challenge everybody in this place to name one occasion—just one occasion—when a member of the Greens political party has admitted they were wrong. I ask you to really rack your brains and think about whether those smug, self-entitled individuals down there have ever conceded they were wrong about a single thing. They certainly aren't conceding today that they missed the opportunity 10 years ago. In fact, they double down on it. They double down on it despite the fact, as Senator Wong pointed out, they were willing to vote for essentially the same set of arrangements just a couple of years later.

And why is it that the Greens pursue the strategies that they do? It's not pure. They are a political party. This is a group of people who used a whiteboard to strategise their spontaneous walkout on Senator Hanson. This is a group of people engaged in a kind of political game playing that is unparalleled in this place. And what do they want when it comes to environmental issues? What do they want when it comes to climate issues? They want these issues to remain hot and unresolved because that's the way that they can attack the Labor Party. It's best for them if Labor doesn't land solutions to these challenges. It's not good for the environment, it's not good for Australian households and it's not good for Australian business, but it is good for the electoral prospects of the Greens.

A more self-interested, shameless group of people promoting their own interests over the national interests I have never seen. This chamber is subjected to vitriol from that end of the chamber repeatedly, day after day after day. Senator Di Natale stands up here and asks us, 'Why don't you attack the Liberal Party?' I'll tell you why: because just every now and then, after 20 years of daily attacks on the one progressive party capable of legislating real change on climate, we return fire. We need to learn the lessons from the past. It is not enough to say, 'That's all in the past. Can we just all play nicely and get on with the future?' Some measure of reflection— (Time expired)