Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

And I welcome him here, as he says, ‘How dare Senator Brown come in here.’ You are welcome in here as far as I am concerned, Senator Boswell. The more you want to debate this, the more that I will take you on, because you are wrong, outdated and backing the wrong horses. We back the Australian people, a new economy, a green new deal, jobs into the future and a much healthier economy instead of the old fossilised industries, which are largely overseas owned, that the National Party is backing.

Let me put this other statistic in as a challenge to The Nationals or indeed anybody else in this chamber: it is expected by global forecasters that we will increase our individual wealth by 200 to 300 per cent by mid century. If we were to tackle climate change as if it mattered and so that we were world’s best practice instead of mediocre or world’s worst practice, it would knock a per cent or two off that. If you take all the current parameters, it is not going to materially change the wellbeing of our economy by mid century. What does change is that you give security to the planet. What does change is that you give people the feeling that they are in an age in which we are not continually drawing on the limited capital of this planet, its atmosphere, its natural resources and its oceans—all of which are threatened by failure to act. What we will have here tonight if this amendment goes down will be a studied failure to act by people in the government and on the opposition benches in the Senate.