The first Australian Green in the House of Representatives, Adam Bandt, gave his first speech in Parliament yesterday.
It’s a moving affair with many highlights but this struck me:
A sustainable future means rethinking our infrastructure priorities, industry policy and the regulation of energy supply. Maybe its something in the water in the electorate of Melbourne that makes its Member think about revenue and finance, but urgently in need of review is the allocation of public spending: every dollar that goes to backing losers in the fossil fuel industry is a dollar that isn’t creating a clean energy future. The former member for this electorate, Lindsay Tanner, also said that he thought a key question for us is ”˜what will Australia sell the world in 15 years time’? A good question, but on current policy settings, it seems the answer is coal, with us on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest carbon exporter in the next 15 years. This is not global leadership on climate, but failure.