The first-term member recently hosted a climate change summit with invited local business owners hearing from a series of experts on the opportunities presented by the world’s movement towards a net zero emissions economy.
Sitting with the Coalition as a representative of The Nationals, his side of politics has often been criticised for a lack of action on climate change, but Mr Birrell said it was an unfair characterisation.
“I completely reject the assertion that the previous Coalition government didn’t do anything about it. I mean, I’ve seen enormous initiatives towards a cleaner energy future,” he said.
“In some cases that’s really difficult, but one example is the fact that Australia’s got the highest per capita rooftop solar uptake in the world, now the government helps that by subsidising and having policies to encourage that.”
Mr Birrell said the goal of his summit was to link people with knowledge of clean energy opportunities with the people who have to make the transition.
“My aim was to try and facilitate discussion amongst those who can help work through our energy transition and who need to transition and I think there was a lot of constructive discussion around that,” he said.
“As I said in my maiden speech it’s not the if we act, it’s the how we act and it’s a very challenging area because businesses want to stay profitable and need to stay profitable as they transition so we need to find ways they can do that.
Mr Birrell said he’d like to take the lead during his term in helping the region make the transition to clean energy.
“As much as I can,” he said.
“It’s up to government to facilitate these conversations, but eventually there are technological solutions out there that in some cases will be viable and it’s up to those being presented to the businesses and for them to be assisted in every way to be able to make use of those technological solutions.”
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