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

We support our targets, which include in excess of 82 per cent renewables in our grid by 2030 and net zero by 2050. I've said in this chamber to you, Senator, and to others in your party that we recognise the scale of the transformation of Australia's energy grid and energy sources that is required for that. Australia is a very fossil fuel intensive economy, and we've benefited economically from that over many decades, but that is no longer the world in which we live, and we have to live in a world where we can thrive in a net zero economy. That means a massive transformation. Unlike the Greens—we have a difference of views about how to achieve that.

The approach from the Greens seems to be that you just stop. We say that you actually have to shift. You have to generate new capacity in renewables. The measures that Mr Bowen announced the week before last or last week—I'm sorry, I'm losing the weeks towards the end of the year—in terms of capacity investment are designed to do that. A lot is said internationally; a lot is said domestically. If I may say, I think too much of the climate debate has been a lot of rhetoric and not enough about policy. We're interested in policy that actually transforms the Australian economy so we can be the renewable energy superpower that we have sought to be for so many years, but it has never been delivered.