The Greens have rebuked the Morrison government's plan to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a gas plant announced the very same day that.
The Australian Greens MPs
The Leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, says the National Cabinet agenda should include the Greens’ call for investment in publicly-owned domestic mRNA vaccine production.
The Greens have been calling for publicly-owned vaccine manufacturing for almost a year, and since February have been explicitly calling for Australia to be able to produce mRNA vaccines here. Top scientists and immunisation experts have also argued that Australia should have domestic mRNA production.
Current expert advice and international experience suggests that it could take 6 months to construct and commence mRNA production domestically in Australia, which is not only competitive with the Government’s best guess timeline around international vaccine imports, but vastly superior, as it would provide a permanent buffer against unexpected events overseas.
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The Australian Greens MPs
The Greens say the government should use unallocated discretionary funds set aside for COVID to begin work on a publicly-owned domestic vaccine manufacturer. If the government fails to act, the Greens plan to move in the Senate to demand action on domestic vaccine production when Parliament resumes.
The Greens call on the Government to ensure that the 2021/22 budget allocates funding for the urgent development of publicly-owned mRNA vaccine manufacturing capability in Australia, and that it immediately initiates this work by drawing on $1 billion from the $10 billion made available in the 2020/21 Advance to the Finance Minister, which was boosted for the specific purpose of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of which remains unallocated.
The Australian Greens MPs
The release of a report planning for the end of coal by the right-leaning Blueprint Institute shows that all sides of politics were now calling for a managed transition out of coal, Leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt MP said.
“The time of coal is over and the time for clean energy has begun,” Mr Bandt said. “When even conservative think tanks are putting forward proposals to leave coal, you can tell this transition is unstoppable.
“A safe climate requires us to get out of coal by 2030, but how we do it matters. Germany was able to transition out of coal without a single worker forcibly losing their job, but a bad approach could put thousands out of work and see a few coal barons get massive taxpayer-funded payouts.