Michael McCormack Said “Hell Will Freeze Over” Before He Listens To The Greens On Climate Change
The Acting Prime Minister also accused Greens leader Adam Bandt of treason.
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack launched a tirade against the Greens in Parliament yesterday, after being called out on the LNP’s doomed climate policy.
In Question Time on Thursday, Greens leader Adam Bandt challenged the Liberal National Party on their ability to protect agricultural workers if conditions in rural areas continue to get worse.
“You have Australia on track to warm by over four degrees,” he said. “This is a death sentence for millions of Australians including our farmers. Why are you doing everything in your power to make droughts and bushfires and extreme weather worse?”
Bandt continued to ask when the Government will listen to the Greens party, as well as the G7 summit leaders, about urgent climate solutions.
McCormack conveniently avoiding the fact that Adam Bandt didn't just ask if the Coalition will listen to the Greens, but basically the rest of the world.
But, as always, the Coalition shamefully makes it a partisan effort and inaccurately slur, not addresses Climate. #QT
— Rhys Parton
?? – Bring Them #HomeToBilo (@RhysParton) June 17, 2021
“You talk of global warming, but hell will freeze over […] before I start listening to the Greens, I’ll tell you what,” the leader of the Nationals party replied, before spinning it back to his usual pitting of regional and metro areas against one another.
Imagine the outrage if Adam Bandt was as derogatory towards the people of regional Australia as our acting Prime Minister is towards people like me.
— Robert Merkel (@rgmerk) June 16, 2021
He then raised that Bandt wrote to the ambassador of every nation with voting power in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last year, to veto Mathias Cormann’s leadership bid in the international policy organisation because it would be a “blow to tackling climate change”.
“The Member for Melbourne should start talking things up in Australia, not run us down, not tell other countries, and write to their ambassadors that they should deny Australian trade, because that’s what he has done,” the man literally representing the entire country at the moment, said. “Treasonous, I would call that. Absolute traitor.”
Today in things the acting prime minister said, Michael McCormack has accused the Greens leader Adam Bandt of treason
— Amy Remeikis (@AmyRemeikis) June 17, 2021
The real treachery is loving coal more than your country. pic.twitter.com/jG6iA8OApL
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) June 17, 2021
The Speaker of the House immediately forced McCormack to withdraw his comment. McCormack did so, but reiterated he thought Bandt was a disgrace, and said Australia’s emissions are at record lows — a fact only possible because of coronavirus restrictions last year.
Bandt hit back at McCormack by saying he’s a “threat to Australia” in response.
McCormack is filling in for Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is in Cornwall at the moment for the G7 summit, where climate change was a big topic on the menu.