Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

As ever, I am delighted to be able to contribute to this debate today, one that reeks of hypocrisy and with all sorts of falsehoods being peddled again in this place, trying to whip up Australians into a sense of alarm and feeling like the world is about to end tomorrow. It's just madness to suggest, based on everything we have just heard, that this motion in any way should be supported today. Frankly, to put in a silo consideration of environmental impact on any development to the exclusion of economic and social impacts is bad policymaking and bad decision-making. The coalition, for one, doesn't think that's the right approach. But if you were to read this motion and follow it through to its natural conclusion and we didn't have coalmines or any other developments taking place I just wonder what sort of economic impact there would be. I wonder what would it mean for jobs, power prices and the hospitals that rely on energy to actually do what it is they need to do. I don't think that comes into the considerations of the Australian Greens when they move these motions.

It's interesting, though. We read this motion and it talks about this terrible, dastardly Albanese government:

… fuelling the climate and extinction crises by approving 3 coal mines that will destroy hundreds of hectares of threatened species habitat and lock in 1.4 billion tonnes of climate pollution out until the 2060s.

Why didn't they move such a motion when the dastardly Albanese Labor government decided to roll out 28,000 kilometres of high-tension electricity power networks across our countryside, removing hillsides of natural vegetation and depriving these poor koalas of their habitats that these powerlines will remove, or when wind farms scraped the tops off mountains when they were put in place? Oh, I know why—it's okay to do it for certain projects but not others. It's a bit like when the rather less-than-impressive Premier of Victoria said, when the environment minister rightly knocked on the head the port terminal in the Port of Hastings for the offshore wind zone, that the Labor government in Victoria will stop at nothing to get this wind farm built, even if—and this was the reason the port terminal was knocked on the head—the port is built in a Ramsar listed wetland, a fragile part of the world. But, according to that premier in Victoria, a Labor premier, it doesn't matter if we trash the planet to save the environment. What hypocrisy! There are people in this place who have responsibility for environmental impacts who have themselves overseen the destruction of the environment, which is why I use the word 'hypocrisy'. Nothing reeks of hypocrisy more than people who are willing to support a motion of this nature but turn a blind eye to their own activities. Honestly!

But, again, I'll come back to this general proposition. We've a country where the economy is slowing, where jobs are hard to secure, where the cost of living is out of control and where the cost of doing business and being able to make ends meet, frankly, is not in any way competitive with elsewhere around the world. We then have these motions which would, as I said before, taken to their natural conclusion, just drive up the cost of doing business. If it becomes more expensive to do business in this country, the jobs in those businesses will be less secure. When jobs are less secure and people don't have take-home pay that they can rely on, they struggle to pay their mortgage, they can't pay their power bills and they can't keep food on the table.

This is the problem with this sort of thinking. It's great to be paid every fortnight by the taxpayer and not worry at all about what regular Australians out there who don't have the same benefits are dealing with. That's what this motion is all about—turning a blind eye to the real-world problems that Australians, be they business owners, mums and dads or ordinary Australians, and most households are dealing with. Not once in that contribution from the Australian Greens, the movers of this motion, did we hear any reference to 'cost-of-living crisis'. Not once did we hear any reference to bringing down the cost of electricity. The reason why is that they don't care about those issues. Ideologically, they pursue these ones, with no regard for what impact they would have on a regular Australian household. So I say to most Australians: understand that, when we vote against these motions, we are doing it in your interests.