David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to call what we're seeing in this 'renewable power sharing' and delivering the hope and lifting that dead hand of the coalition off investment in renewables, in a green, clean future for regional Australia. That amendment also ensures that the NRF will be focused on the task of rebuilding a manufacturing base, because we don't have endless amounts of public money. Every dollar that we dip into the corporate coffers of the fossil fuel industry, the gas industry, every dollar we spend destroying our native forests, which I know is where the coalition likes sending public money, is a dollar we can't spend on building our manufacturing base.

I know that there are minor right-wing parties that want to see endless amounts of taxpayers' money—paid for by hardworking Australians—go into fossil fuel corporations. They love doing that. The Greens don't, and we won't let it happen on our watch. Those Greens amendments mean it won't happen on our watch.

The Greens have also secured an amendment that will ensure that investments made by the National Reconstruction Fund board align with the legislated climate targets and with any future updated commitment by Australia under the Paris Agreement. This will track in line as, I hope, our national targets become more ambitious and our climate targets become more ambitious and start getting close to meeting the science. This will mean that investments by the National Reconstruction Fund board need to also align with those improvements going forward.

Why do we need this investment in manufacturing? If you look at some of the data and compare Australia's economy with other economies around the world, we have an economy that is excessively reliant on the resources industry, with a lack of complexity that makes our economic future extremely fragile as those changes happen—as they will happen in the fossil fuel industry and other parts of the mining sector. Australia ranks 91st in the world for economic complexity, and that's because we have literally, through years of neo, of—