Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

Happy 10th anniversary of transmission Tuesday. We're so excited it's the 10th anniversary that we're celebrating on a Monday. We're here a day early for the 10th anniversary of transmission Tuesday. We got interrupted at our last go at it; it's why some of us are back today. Most of us have done the double-digit performance, so it's getting a bit to the stage of: how many times can you make the point, or as I have said earlier, how much can a koala bear?

Just for you, Senator Cadell: how much can a koala bear? Well, I can tell you that rural and regional communities are starting to get tested to that nth degree.

But I did want to make a very special mention of the contribution we saw from Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young. I was listening to what she was saying, as painful as that was to do. I was listening to the personal attacks on opposition leader Mr Dutton and the personal attacks that were consistently being made to those who don't belong to the unicorn-farming society, but there was no mention of transmission lines, which I find a little ironic considering we're here for transmission Tuesday—celebrating early on the Monday. There was no mention of the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines that are being bulldozed through prime agricultural land, through rural and regional communities and through the last chlamydia-free koala habitat. We know it's gone. No STD will be getting them—just a transmission line—and bulldoze we go for the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines that are required. I do note Senator Reynolds' point about the windfarm of WA, which was an outstanding one—no consideration of national security. That could be because this government has moved national security advice from the national security committee and put climate change on it. So we have the minister for climate change, Mr Bowen, advocating for wind farms off the coast of WA, within cooee of where submarines are going to be based.

But perhaps we should all practice now: 'Ni hao!' Because if those who sit at the end of the chamber got their way, I think that's how we'd all be speaking. Every single one of these renewable projects that they are so keen on, every project that they're so enthusiastic about, all those solar panels—