Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're now into hour 70,100 of the longest-running soap opera in Australian politics, and that is the soap opera of the Liberal and National parties trying to work out where they stand on climate change and net zero emissions. As I said on ABC Capricornia radio today, this soap opera has been running so long that it makes Days of Our Lives seem like a miniseries. This has been going on for the entire life of this government, and the only people who are losing out as a result of this government's failure to deal with this issue are regional Australians, who are seeing jobs that should be going into our regions disappear offshore to countries who are getting ahead of us.

Let's be very clear: this pantomime that we are seeing in Canberra this week—where we have Liberals fighting Liberals, Liberals fighting Nationals, Nationals fighting Liberals, Nationals fighting Nationals—is a farce. We all know that the government is going to reach net zero emissions. Senator Abetz must be just shaking in his boots about the fact that he has built his political career on fighting against climate change action and he knows that the government is going to sign up to it. He knows that this is a foregone conclusion and he knows that those people from the National Party who are carrying on day in, day out, are just playing up for the cameras and yet again are going to prove that they are completely inadequate when it comes to the task of representing our regions.

Let's be clear: the government's net zero emissions plan, which is coming any day now, is a fake plan from a fake Prime Minister, supported by fake farmers and fake miners. This is a government full of fakes from top to bottom. Senator Canavan at least had the decency to call it out yesterday when he pointed out that this government's slogan 'Technology not taxes' is complete crap, complete rubbish, completely meaningless. He likened it to rainbows and puppies. So, for every minister that we see get up in question time today and rabbit on about technology not taxes, just substitute rainbows and puppies. That's what they're talking about and that's what they've been called out for by one of their own members.

Net zero is not the only example where we see the Nationals letting down our regions. They have let down their regions even on regional development grants, where it's just been revealed that more than half of this government's regional development grants have gone to the major cities. One of these regional development grants went to that famous regional football club called Collingwood. That's how regional this National Party government is when it comes to supporting the regions. They've let down the regions on casualisation, they've let down the regions on disaster management and they've let down the regions on GPs and aged care, and now they're doing it again by letting jobs disappear. (Time expired)