Senator MARSHALL (Victoria) (16:58): I do not know whether to laugh or cry after hearing Senator Roberts's contribution to the debate on this matter of public importance. I should laugh because I have never heard so much stupidity in my life. It sounds like it is coming from the Illuminati that seem to support you—or maybe the lizard people, those humanoid lizard creatures that you also believe in. Or should I cry because this is the level of debate that is actually now in this chamber and there are people who actually believe these sorts of things and are peddling this absolute nonsense, as if there is no evidence out there that the climate is being affected and is being changed? Apart from yourself and everyone in Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, you have managed to attack everybody else in the chamber. Apparently the three of you have this superior knowledge that seems to come from some being somewhere, despite all the settled evidence that has been around for decades—absolute decades. We may disagree in this chamber on the way to try to remove the pollution from our society that is creating climate change, and that is a fair debate to have. But you come in here and say—Senator Macdonald has acknowledged this—until this year, there has never been a debate about climate in the parliament. Who told you that, Senator? Who whispered in your ear in the dark of night? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Ketter ): Order! Senator Marshall, please address your comments to the chair. Senator MARSHALL: Thank you, and I should. I am glad Senator Roberts is going, because I might be able to move on and say something about the science in a moment. There must be some voices whispering in Senator Roberts's ears, saying, 'There hasn't been a debate in the federal parliament about climate change,' even though, for the last two decades, there has. It has probably been one of the most debated issues in this parliament over the last 20 years. But anyway, the voices, the voices, Senator Roberts, the voices—they are out there somewhere. Ignore them! Ignore them, if you can. I do not want to give Senator Bernardi a plug, but to say that he has been silenced on this issue is another quite extraordinary claim. Let us leave your contribution to one side, Senator Roberts, because, seriously, you should go back and reread it. That was appalling. I want to go back to Senator McKim's contribution, because, quite frankly, I found that a little bit offensive too—he said that everyone else in this chamber makes him sick about where we have gone with this. Senator McKim: I was talking about the left hand side. Senator MARSHALL: All right. I want to remind Senator McKim—I know he was not in the chamber at the time—that in 2009 the Greens stood shoulder to shoulder with the climate change sceptics over there and voted down the emissions trading scheme that we put before the Senate. Let me tell you, the voting down of that scheme at that time pushed back the momentum on the introduction of renewable energies. It pushed back the investment in renewable energies in this country, and many job opportunities at that time were lost, because you stood shoulder to shoulder with the sceptics over there and voted that scheme down. Senator Back, who I have enormous respect for, made the point that coal is going to be part of the energy mix, not only in Australia but in the rest of the world, for a while yet. That is absolutely true; we cannot simply say we are going to close all our coal-fired power stations tomorrow. We cannot do that, because this government does not have any energy plan for what would come after that. Senator Back is also right: coal will remain in our energy mix. But it will not be forever; eventually coal will be gone from the energy mix. In the interim, on the journey to not using coal at all, if we can use more high-intensity, less-polluting coal, that would be a good thing, and we should do that. In that respect, Senator Back is absolutely right. Let us look at where we are now. The emissions trading schemes that most countries have put in place and that we had in place in two forms for a while were letting the market determine the energy mix for us—given the goals that we had to set to reduce our emissions. In the first instance, with new technologies, if you are going to intervene in that marketplace you intervene to give someone who is at a disadvantage more of an advantage so that they can compete. Naturally, in renewable energies there were subsidies, and I think that was quite right. Those subsidies have driven changes in technology and improvements that we could not dream about only a decade ago. A decade ago, we could not dream about the advances in solar technology and battery storage power. It has been one of the most extraordinary technological advances that we have seen, and that has come as a result of worldwide targets, subsidies and investments made on the back of those subsidies to generate the development of those technologies. Those technologies are increasing exponentially, and they are already now at the stage where investors will not invest in coal-fired power, because renewable energies are cheaper. Renewable energy power is now cheaper than coal power. Any new coal power station built now will require enormous government subsidies—we are already subsidising coal. Very soon, renewables will not need any subsidies at all. Investors are ready making these commercial decisions. If we actually had a government that had a proper energy plan, we would not be relying on other people—companies—to make decisions about when our coal-powered power stations and generators will close. We would be making those decisions ourselves. Over the next couple of decades, three-quarters of our coal-fired power stations will be reaching their use-by dates. At that time, we will be free from coal generation in this country. We will still have a mix of gas and other energy sources, but that is where we are going. So, instead of having a proper energy plan and a government courageous enough to say, 'This is where we, as a country, are going to be'—a low carbon emissions country doing our bit to reduce our global emissions—we are allowing other people to decide when our coal-powered power stations will close. This is a terrible indictment of this government, because every time they squander the opportunity to have a plan, to have a long-term policy, they squander the opportunity for investment in this country, they squander the opportunity for R&D development of new technologies in this country and they squander opportunities for job development by these new technologies in this country. The government's failure to have a policy to enable those things to happen is a disgrace. Australia is well placed to be one of the leaders in the development of these technologies, and again, coming back to the point I made earlier, I am are so bitterly disappointed because back in 2009 we were at the leading edge with our proposed emissions trading scheme. We would have seen a lot of that investment in R&D activity go on in this country and we would have seen significant jobs growth in this country as a result of that. This was squandered in the first instance by the Greens standing shoulder to shoulder with the climate change sceptics and voting it down and then ultimately by this government voting down the second iteration of that cost-on-pollution scheme that we had in place. This has been an enormous tragedy for this country, and another enormous tragedy is the people who say the sorts of things that come out of Senator Roberts's mouth. I hope we never have to hear it again—there is this alternative world where apparently we have not been debating climate change in this chamber until their presence this year.