Young people will be guaranteed a job, secure income, and free education under a new Greens recovery plan to restart the economy and build ‘a better normal’ after the coronavirus economic shock.

The vision for a debt-financed recovery reaffirms the government’s role in responding to the crisis, and rejects the austerity approaches offered by the Liberal and Labor parties, charting a course for a government-led recovery that extends Australia’s world-class social services, instead of slashing funding for education, healthcare, and the environment.

The bushfires devastating communities across regional New South Wales and Victoria require an emergency response from the Government that not only addresses the fires currently burning but also tackles the root cause of those fires and the fires yet to come - the climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels like coal - said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

Australia is in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave and bushfire emergency, but the Prime Minister has been missing in action. Scott Morrison must show some leadership and immediately convene emergency meetings with fire chiefs, peak medical bodies and cross-party political leadership to craft a response to this crisis, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

”The country is in crisis and the Australian people are crying out for leadership, but Scott Morrison has been missing in action," said Di Natale.

It’s time that the fossil fuel companies whose products are responsible for the climate crisis start footing some of the bill for cleaning it up. A $1 levy per tonne of carbon pollution from the country’s biggest polluters, proposed today by the Australia Institute, is the very least that these companies can do, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

Scott Morrison needs to stop listening to his big donors in the fossil fuel industry and pay attention to the 11,000 scientists who have jointly declared that we are in a climate emergency and must act urgently in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

“We are now in a climate emergency and that is a fact. The scientists know it and the community knows it, but Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party still have their heads buried firmly in the sand,” said Di Natale.

The Australian public will never forgive the Labor Party if it abandons any commitment to taking genuine action on the climate crisis as Joel Fitzgibbon is now arguing, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

Greens spokesperson for the climate crisis, Adam Bandt MP, has warned that the United Nations Climate Summit has made it abundantly clear that even if global Paris pledges are met, it won’t be enough to avoid catastrophic global warming.

“This summit made it crystal clear that even if Australia meets its Paris commitments, that won’t be enough,” said Mr Bandt.

“The world’s Paris pledges, including Australia’s, have us on track for a catastrophic 3.4 degrees of global warming.

By skipping the United Nations Climate Summit to attend the opening of a box factory owned by a billionaire donor to the Liberal Party with President Trump, Scott Morrison is showing just how out of touch he is with the millions of Australians demanding genuine action on climate change, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale. 

David Littleproud is a climate change denier and is not fit to serve as minister for water resources, drought, natural disaster and emergency management. He must resign as minister and, if he will not, then the Prime Minister must intervene and remove him, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.

If the Labor Party dumps its current target of 45 percent emissions reduction by 2030, they will lose whatever credibility they have left on the climate crisis and prove that they’ve learnt all the wrong lessons from the election, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.  

“Queensland and New South Wales are burning, our firefighters and emergency responders on the ground are screaming out for support and Labor’s response is to join the climate deniers in the Liberals,” Di Natale said.