Page 3661 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 September 2019
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Contrary to conservative thinking, it is possible to do all of these things at once. Our efforts on climate change and our leadership on renewables bring new industry and innovation to our city. An experienced government like us can do all of this. An inexperienced and immature opposition misleads and has no vision. The choice could not be more clear, Madam Assistant Speaker: a Labor government that is leading the way or an inexperienced Liberal government that does not believe in renewable energy and does not listen to experts when it comes to climate change.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.18): Madam Assistant Speaker, I feel compelled to engage in this debate. I would like to echo the sentiments of Ms Lawder. She has outlined the long and distinguished history that we have in this place, in terms of our support for renewables. In fact I would like to note, as the Leader of the Opposition at the last election, that we had tripartisan targets that we took to the election. We have maintained support for those. The Canberra Liberals have a very proud history of supporting measures that are achievable, affordable and responsible.
We support pragmatic measures that achieve outcomes, not alarmism. We are increasingly seeing alarmism in the shifting sands that is the Labor Party position. I note that Bill Shorten, when it came to the climate strike earlier this year, was opposed to students taking action outside school hours. I do admit that that did not end well for him at the federal election, but it seems that the Labor Party’s position is ever-shifting as they seek even greater levels of outrage.
We are getting on with the business of actually supporting measures that make sense and that will achieve the outcomes we want. Indeed when the climate emergency was announced in this place by members opposite, it was proposed by the Canberra Liberals that we end or restrict air travel, all of the junkets that members opposite love to take. Mr Rattenbury, Mr Barr and Mr Gentleman swan overseas with their entourage to see what is happening overseas, in various cities in Europe, America, Singapore and elsewhere.
This is a practical measure that could have been taken by this Assembly. There is limited action that we personally can take in this debate. That is one that we could have taken, and the Labor Party and the Greens voted against it. This is the same party that has scrapped a whole bunch of school buses, so that students and their parents have to get into cars. There are many hundreds more vehicle movements throughout the city because they scrapped the school buses.
There is a lot that we can do; there is lots that we should do. We do not agree with turning off people’s gas. We do not think we should turn off people’s gas that they use to heat their homes and cook their food. But we do support, as I said, those measures that are reasonable, responsible, achievable and affordable.
What I do not support—and this is the same, I think, as Mr Shorten’s position earlier this year, the former federal Labor leader; I am not sure what the current leader’s position is—is causing alarm, scaring children and using children as part of our own political activism. I fear that is what is happening here, because this student strike is no longer a student strike; it has been taken over by politicians. Mr Gupta wants to go
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