8 home of energy-intensive industries in the Asia-Pacific. Taking effective action on climate change also means restoring and protecting our water supplies, sustaining the nation’s food bowls and helping farmers put fresh food on our tables. Our systems are all interconnected. We can’t have a resilient agricultural industry if we continue to drag our feet on climate change. Strong government leadership is crucial to manage a just transition, facilitate investment in low-cost clean energy and turbocharge economic activity and job creation across Australia. In recent years the people of Australia have lost faith in our political system. We have been ashamed by the lack of integrity and transparency that it has shown. We have lost trust in its processes and have become disaffected and disappointed. We can restore confidence in our democracy by establishing a national integrity commission, improving whistleblower protections, restoring freedom of the media and legislating for transparency in political donations and truth in political advertising. In 1949 Ben Chifley spoke of working for the betterment of humankind. He called it the ‘light on the hill’. In his first speech, the member for Melbourne expressed hope that that light would now be powered by renewable energy. In these last years many Australians have perceived a dimming of the light of Australian democracy. Many of us felt that our elected
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjA0NDY=