“They don’t care”: Barnaby Joyce makes extraordinary claim about Kmart shoppers
Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has made an extraordinary claim about Kmart shoppers.
During a media conference in Canberra on energy policy and the drought, Joyce suggested “people in the local Kmart” did not care about climate change.
“No 1 for the area is drought and what is happening now,” the member for New England said on Monday. “The other thing is power prices.
“The issue is this: people in the Kmart, people in the local pub, they don’t care about the Paris agreement. It means nothing to them. It has no purpose.
“What matters to them is this: that they can be able to afford their power bills and they currently cannot. It’s not about power prices staying where they are. They are too high. They’ve got to go down.”
The Paris Agreement, made in 2015, requires Australia to cut emissions to 26 per cent less than the 2005 level by 2030.
Shoppers were quick to take to social media to hit back at Joyce’s link between Kmart shoppers and not caring about climate change.
According to Kmart’s website, the environmental policy states: “By December 2020, we will reduce average store energy use (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) by at least 20 per cent.”