MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr GREGG (Deakin) (16:08): What we've witnessed today is a lethargic grumble unencumbered by self-awareness. Not a single structural issue in our economy has come as a surprise. We've got productivity issues, we have got a need for tax reform, we have an ageing population and a need to improve aged care, and we have energy and climate challenges—all of which were predictable for over a decade.
There was not a single structural issue in the Australian economy those opposite left undealt with. We had nine years of coalition government and absolutely not one single structural issue was dealt with. If there was a problem, they would kick it down the road every single time.
They talk about energy policy. They watched Hazelwood close in my home state of Victoria. They replaced it with nothing.
They had this weird ideological obsession with opposing anything renewable. They were basically talking about how wind farms were turning dolphins into drag queens or something like that. They'd bring out the crazy every time renewable energy came up.
They said how much they love coal. They even cosplayed as coal miners, but they didn't even increase coal. They don't even love coal enough to build anything.
They simply did not do anything to address the energy needs of Australians. We're paying for it now, as we are for so much of their inaction over the course of their government. Unlike the coalition, we deal with the challenges before us.
We take action. We prioritise the interests of the Australian people and we will continue confronting the long-term structural challenges facing our economy. We will deal with the need to increase productivity.
We invest in the skills for tomorrow, we invest in the infrastructure for tomorrow and we make tough decisions around tax and revenue to make sure we set Australia up for success in the long term. Now, they've talked about, as well, radicalisation. They have before them a proposal for a digital duty of care—in other words, a responsibility to take reasonable steps to ensure your product doesn't cause foreseeable harm.
That doesn't sound unreasonable. We know that the algorithms bring out the crazy. They promote radicalisation.
They pose a serious security risk. Decent, normal human beings asking decent, normal human questions are being pummelled with propaganda, with nonsense and with extremist material. And yet they propose more of the same, which is, as usual from the coalition, doing more of nothing and kicking the problem down the road.
This is a consistent pattern of the coalition. They'll express outrage over any solution, but they'll do nothing about the problem. They'll hold up a pamphlet, they'll hold up a booklet, but they'll tend to ignore the substantive stuff.
They'll ignore it when the Productivity Commission says, 'Get on with dealing with productivity early in the game.' They'll ignore the 2015 Intergenerational report, which highlighted productivity, the ageing population and other long-term challenges. They ignored that. Then they ignored integrated systems plans for our energy renewable build-up and creating energy abundance for tomorrow.
They ignored that. They had 22 energy policies but kicked them all down the road. They had policy paralysis, year after year.
They were compulsive nonachievers in government. There was not a single problem they wouldn't leave completely unsolved, because they're lazy in government. They were too busy eating each other's heads to do anything for the Australian people.
When you look back, what are the great accomplishments of the Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott governments? Bugger all, because they didn't achieve a single major structural change for the future of our economy. They did nothing to set us up for success.
They allowed our training system to be decimated, leaving us without the skills we need to ensure a productive economy tomorrow. They let the energy system fall apart, and their only solution now is more kicking the can down the road. They're like, 'Oh, well, let these coal-fired power plants be sweat out.' That's code for 'leave them to become more unreliable and more expensive, and leave the danger of blackouts again and again'.
We're getting on with the job because we're not afraid of renewables. We don't have conspiracy theories. We can go out without putting on a tinfoil hat.
This is about taking sensible, logical steps to ensure that we have the energy we need for an economy of tomorrow, and we should stop treating this as some kind of conspiracy theory. We need electricity. There are lots of different ways to make electricity.
We have made a choice because we know how to create a policy and then implement it, rather than come up with 21 more. So leave it to Labor to deal with the long-term structural challenges, and leave it to the Liberal Party to pummel itself into irrelevance. What we saw from the Leader of the Opposition was an example of why the Liberal Party is failing.
They are, structurally, a leader-centric party without leadership, and that's why we're seeing the numbers we have today. When the Leader of the Opposition looks more like a senator from One Nation than the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives, we know we've got a problem. They are directionless, they're in disagreement and they have no vision for the future—just another blue pamphlet they hold up, another blue pamphlet full of nonsense, with all the creativity of a Dr Seuss book, but absolutely no real capacity to look after the interests of the Australian people into the future.
Labor is onto the job and the coalition are once again failing the Australian people.