Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (13:18): The major parties have completely failed us on climate change. For years they have wilfully ignored warnings from scientists, and now we are all paying the price. Melbourne has just had its hottest winter on record, and now we are being warned to brace for a horror summer with extreme fire and flood warnings and a super El Niño. And yet, in the face of these warnings, Labor has approved five new fossil fuel projects in the past year. The Liberals and One Nation are even worse. They want to open up more coal, gas and logging and rip up renewable energy projects. So we have Labor, the Liberals and One Nation who all support more fossil fuels even though they know that this will destroy Victorian communities.

We already have large parts of Victoria that are virtually uninsurable and are becoming unliveable. Do ministers not see what just happened in Nepal? Over 1300 people are dead from a collapsing glacier. I actually honestly do not know what it will take for Labor and Liberal MPs to stop approving new fossil fuel projects. Maybe they think they will be immune to the impacts of climate change with all the money they earn from the cushy gas industry lobby jobs that they will get when they leave Parliament. But when Victorians face the next fire, flood, crop failure or insurance premium hike, they will be asking what Labor and Liberal MPs did to protect them. Those MPs will have to look Victorians in the face and say they did worse than just sitting on their hands; they actually actively poured fuel on the fire by opening new fossil fuels.