Leadership Quote by Adam Bandt

Four words, all muscle, no poetry: a slogan engineered to turn a sprawling climate argument into a single, enforceable red line. Adam Bandt isn’t trying to “raise awareness.” He’s trying to collapse the policy debate into a veto point: if you’re serious about climate targets, you can’t keep approving the supply that blows them up.

The phrasing does two jobs at once. “Stop” is an imperative, not a plea; it presumes authority and frames continued approvals as an active choice, not an unfortunate byproduct of “demand.” “New” is the tactical hinge. It sidesteps the politically impossible task of switching off existing infrastructure overnight and instead targets the moment governments have the most control: approvals, subsidies, and investment signals. “Coal and gas” is also deliberate. Gas often hides behind the “transition fuel” halo; pairing it with coal denies it moral cover and treats both as part of the same emissions lock-in.

The subtext is a challenge to Australia’s bipartisan habit of climate ambition with fossil expansion: net-zero rhetoric on one hand, new basins and fields on the other. Bandt is marking that as hypocrisy and daring opponents to defend it in plain language. He’s also speaking past Parliament to the broader electorate: activists who want clarity, younger voters tired of half-measures, and communities watching disasters intensify while approvals roll on.

As political messaging, it’s blunt by design: a chantable demand that forces every “responsible, balanced” centrist answer to sound like “keep building the problem.”