Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I might begin by saying, of course, we have to discount a motion coming from the Liberal-National coalition around broken promises. It's a party that seems to think it's okay to lie to the Australian people to maintain cabinet-in-confidence, which we've just found out about in recent days. I want to say to the Labor Party: if the safeguard mechanism that you are bringing to parliament is your plan for climate action, that will be a broken promise to the millions of Australians who gave you and the Greens and the crossbench a mandate for change in this parliament, at this really important and absolutely critical time in history.

If the best we're going to get is an ex-Tony Abbott scheme, adopted from the Liberal Party and from Angus Taylor, Australians are going to be bitterly disappointed. They will see this as a broken promise when you campaigned on climate action. That's okay, because the Greens are here to help. It might feel like a thin green line, some days, but we are here to hold that line for the millions of Australians who voted for climate action and make sure that we put our communities, our country and nature first, and make sure that we get an outcome on reducing emissions.

The legislation that you are bringing to parliament and that we've had a good look at now does nothing to reduce emissions. It does nothing to act on our planet emergency. You can't fix a problem by making it worse. This is the greatest challenge of our time. Guess who said that? Yes, a former Labor prime minister. This is a chance to fix it. We're happy to work with you to make sure we have no new fossil fuel projects in this country. (Time expired)