Climate Change
As I'm sure this chamber is aware, the Paris Agreement is a collective response to the global threat of climate change. It has been signed by a number of countries, including China.
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Nuclear Waste
I firmly believe, and the government firmly believes, that we need to find a long-term solution to store our nuclear waste, primarily produced by the world-class facility at Lucas Heights, which produces nuclear medicines that will help to improve the health of, on average, one out of every two Australians during their lifetime.
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Driving Power Prices Down
The government has a laser-like focus to reduce power prices. The No. 1 focus of the Minister for Energy is to reduce prices. Some successes have been made in the past year.
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Recent developments regarding northern Australia's water resources
A few years ago the government outlined a visionary white paper to develop northern Australia and, in that white paper, we committed to look at the water resources of three water catchments across the north: the Mitchell River in the cape, the Darwin catchment in the Northern Territory and the Fitzroy River in Western Australia.
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Aid for drought-stricken farmers
Yesterday, building on announcements we've made recently, the agriculture minister, Mr Littleproud, the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr McCormack, all made further announcements to support our farmers. That takes our assistance to drought affected farmers to $1.8 billion during this drought, recognising this drought in some locations has gone on for many years, particularly in western Queensland
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Murray-Darling Basin
We do of course share his interest in ensuring that the Murray-Darling is returned to environmental health, but we also want to ensure that communities that rely on the use of water have their jobs and industry sustained as well and that those communities continue into the future in a healthy way.
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National Energy Guarantee
At that meeting last week, it was very, very clear from the delegation from Victoria that they were focused on one thing: their re-election, not the reduction of power bills for the Australian people. That was their focus. Right through this process, the Victorian government have otherwise supported the National Energy Guarantee.
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Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015
I am opposed to the Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015 because I believe in the sanctity of human life. Leaving the state to assist and sanction suicide, in my view, would diminish the special and unique gift of human life.
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Assisting farming households through drought
In many parts of this country the drought has been ongoing. Many parts of western Queensland have had six or seven years of failed wet seasons in a row, and obviously that has an impact not just on the farm business but on the wider community. That's why we on 1 August took the decision to extend our farm household payment assistance from a maximum of three years to four years to recognise the length and severity of the drought.
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Australia's resources contribute to providing affordable, reliable energy
The clear lesson around the world is that the countries that do develop their energy resources, if they're lucky enough to have them, have cheap energy. We traditionally have had that advantage. On our side of politics, we believe in the development of our energy resources to make Australia a strong economy, to create jobs, to support our manufacturing industry and to help households keep power bills down too.
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