Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

r WONG (—) (): In relation to the specific project at Middle Arm, I will get perhaps a little more sophisticated answer than I'm urged to by those opposite. I will try to get a little more information on that, Senator Waters.

On the broader proposition which the senator is putting: I understand that the Greens party has a view that the way to deal with climate change in an international global economy is for Australia to shut down its gas exports and to shut down its gas industry. We don't agree. We believe that the task we have been set with—and we wish it were not after so many years of inaction on the other side—is to transition what is a very resource-intensive economy on a pathway to net zero by 2050. And the imperative of that is not only climate; the imperative of that is also jobs. If the majority of the global economy is moving to a net zero by 2050 target, which it is—I think 84 per cent of global GDP has made that commitment—then we have to be able to compete in that world.

I outlined in my first government question, the question from Senator Sheldon—as have others—the many investments the government is making in hydrogen and in renewable energy in the transition of the economy that I have described. We don't take the view that you take, that the way to deal with this is just to make sure that we shut down some of those industries overnight. So we have a fundamental difference of policy about how to deal with this.