As acting Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy

Scott Morrison and his Government will go to any lengths to avoid taking real action on climate change.
 
It’s a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have been pleading for climate action and the clear majority of Australians who say they are concerned about the impacts of climate change, that Scott Morrison, even though in the US, will not even attend the UN Climate Action Summit.
 
Instead, the Prime Minister has made a cynical diversion to talk about the need to reduce plastic waste, which will do nothing to bring down carbon emissions or address climate change.
 
Overnight we had 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg address the UN Climate Action Summit, making an impatient plea to countries around the world to take strong action saying, “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.”
 
Today David Attenborough shamed the Morrison Government’s lack of climate action and ambition telling ABC’s Hack, “You are the keepers of an extraordinary section of the surface of this planet, including the Barrier Reef, and what you say, what you do, really, really matters.”
 
After carbon emissions came down by more than 10 per cent under the last Labor Government they have been rising ever since Tony Abbott started dictating the Liberals climate policy.
 
The Government’s own data shows carbon emissions rising all the way to 2030, missing the Government’s inadequate 26 per cent emission reduction target by 19 per cent.
 
They have no adequate national climate policy, just a rebadged Tony Abbott scheme which will see emissions continue to go up and up and up.
 
TUESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2019