Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I mean, there weren't enough people to call it a rally, but it was the pretend rally held out the front of the parliament a few months ago. Pull the other one! You're on about whales, koalas and parrots. These people who have never shown a moment's interest—a vestige of interest—in the welfare of whales and parrots and koalas are suddenly in here demanding an inquiry. It's the most woeful acting performance since Beverly Hills Cop III from this show. They're pretending, having a fake campaign about what's going on out there with one of the most significant national projects that this country will ever undertake. And where are they? They're in the way. They're making up issues and making up a fake campaign. You know what? Some of the memes are just direct copies of what is peddled by the far right in the United States or Europe. They don't even bother to get the old AI app out and change the meme. It's the same nonsense meme. We saw the rally of a couple of dozen people out the front. Mr Joyce and others claimed to have had thousands of people there.

It is true that projects like this give rise to legitimate issues and real anxieties, like any project does—like building a shopping centre, a coalmine or a factory in any suburb or region, which happens every day of the week. But, somehow, this is special. The show is prosecuting this campaign with social media memes that are generated out of who knows where. Much of it comes from offshore. I can tell you this: the world is passing you by, and nothing symbolises this more than what the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Joyce, said about these issues. Look at the coherence of this campaign. This is what Mr Joyce said in a newspaper. He was not being quoted in an interview, where I suppose you can get a little bit loose. These are words that he wrote down on paper, stuck in the old fax machine in Danglemah and sent off to the Armidale Express, a very fine newspaper in north-western New South Wales. This is two paragraphs of Joyce 'coherence' on the question, which betrays how silly this campaign is. He said, 'The prevailing zeitgeist seems intent that it is religiously pure if they toss us over the power price cliff.' But what does that sentence mean?

He then goes on to say, 'Power is sold in five-minute lots.' I can verify that; it is true. The National Energy Regulator does say that that is a true thing. But then he goes on: 'Power is five-minute power noodles.' What does that mean? Five-minute noodles are a snack, not a diet that could keep you healthy. Renewables sold in five-minute noodle packages on the national electricity market are a clarion call from the island called naivete. That is the beating intellectual heart of this so-called campaign that pretends to be interested in the environment.