Ms O'CONNOR (Clark) - Thank you for the leading question. I am unhappy, Mr Speaker, because the planet is cooking and we have the sort of puerile debate that we have for this MPI today, brought on by Labor. We had Ms White in here this morning saying the Tasmanian community expects us to behave like adults in here.
I have been looking at the records of sea surface temperatures around the globe and I listened to the kind of garbage that comes out of a scientist's, Dr Broad's, mouth. This parliament has a responsibility. We are not elected to get in here to play games; we are elected by our people to represent them. There are a whole range of values in here but we all share the same responsibility to advocate for our communities and right now the planet is in trouble, the likes of which we have never seen in the history of humanity.
Yes, the Tasmanian community expects us to behave like adults in here but I suspect what we are going to get with this new balance-of-power parliament is assaults day after day, trying to bring down a minority government. That is what is going to happen in here and that is Labor's prerogative, I get that. I totally understand it, I have been around long enough, but boy, we are failing our people. The planet is burning; the seas are simmering. Every one of us in here has a responsibility to work cooperatively with whatever the circumstances are that we are given.
It is a moment in time where we have an opportunity in this complex, mixed, too-small parliament to start preparing our people for what is going to be a blisteringly hot summer. El Nino is coming. Scientists have never seen sea surface temperatures like what we are seeing now.
Sure, as a result of the events of the past week-and-a-half, this is now not a majority parliament. Okay, but we are only halfway through a term. We are elected by our communities to be in here for four years and to do our best by them. As Ms White said; 'behave like adults in here'. Yes, we do; and most people in here have young people they really care about, whether they are our own children, or our nieces and nephews, or the children of friends. To come in here and let those kids down by playing silly political games instead of talking about matters of substance like how to tackle climate change, how to help our communities adapt, how to deal with soaring inequality, the poor are just getting poorer.
How do we deal with the rise of fascism? It is on the rise. They are not just targeting people of Jewish faith, they are targeting transgender people, they are targeting women, they are targeting people of colour. These are the challenges that our civilisation faces and we get the kind of bollocks that we just got from Dr Broad then. I listened to it, sentence after sentence of puerile garbage all designed - like Mr Ellis's before him - with the sole purpose of scoring cheap, dirty, stupid little political points. Ridiculous. Childish. A betrayal of the people who have put us in here.