Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese, the member for Grayndler, and the Australian Labor Party are trying to tell the Australian people a bedtime story about their policies here. You can't have all your cake and eat it too. If you want to have a coalmining industry, you can't say we're going to join radical countries around the world and try to cut carbon emissions to zero in 30 years. Then we have this magical concept that we're going to still keep coalmining but then we're just going to plant a whole lot of trees on farmland and take away farmers' right as compensation. That is the policy of the Labor Party. We have either one or the other. If we have net zero emissions, we've got to shut down the coalmining industry or take away property rights from farmers and put a lot of trees on their land, which would reduce our cotton, rice and sugar production, to pay some kind of penance or buy some kind of indulgence in order to have the continuing ability to produce cheap and affordable energy for the world that can help develop people who are less fortunate that us. That is, now, the once proud Australian Labor Party, which was established in Central Queensland, in Barcaldine, defending shearers' rights, and which purported to defend workers' rights throughout its very proud history of well over 100 years. It is now selling out workers on the global altar of purporting to say something—not do something—about the issue of climate change.

I don't think we should sell Australian workers out. I'm not going to sell our nation's workers out on this global altar. I will defend our right to have jobs here, to develop industry here and to keep our economic wealth here, and I will do so in a way which is realistic, which is up-front with the Australian people and which does not seek to hoodwink them into believing some kind of modern-day fairytale that we can all have our cake and eat it too. We have a choice. We can reduce our carbon emissions, but we can't do it in the radical way the Australian Labor Party is proposing.