WELCOME to Tony Abbott's parallel universe, where, apparently, you have to cut jobs to save them.

Mr Abbott has a big majority in the Australian Parliament but the likes of Qantas and Holden are shedding thousands of jobs. In Victoria, with Liberals at the helm, our gross state product per person has started going backwards and some are warning of recession.

The job-killing consequences of the Liberals' "hands-off" approach to industry are becoming clear, so former treasurer Peter Costello conveniently decides it's all someone else's fault and blames the Greens.

In discussing how best to save jobs, Costello notably didn't mention Qantas, a company Mr Abbott is cutting adrift.

Australia is an island country, we make money from tourism and we have one of the world's safest airlines. Instead of working out how to keep the national carrier, the Liberals are determined to sell Qantas off to the highest bidder, sending jobs, skills and money offshore.

Costello is right that the Greens have a different approach from Mr Abbott. We'd rather see what we can do to support companies like Qantas and keep jobs here. The Greens would rather level the playing field by lifting industry up instead of racing to the bottom.

And, as economists will tell you, if you want the real cause of the pressure on manufacturing, look to the high Aussie dollar fuelled by the mining boom and the competition from low-wage countries like China, not the so-called "carbon tax".

Those pressures come at a time when we need to tackle climate change to protect the Australian way of life. Outside Liberal la-la land, global warming is influencing our weather. This summer has seen 156 temperature records broken and Queensland have its worst drought ever.

If you don't want to spend every Christmas holiday worrying about bushfires and heatwaves, we need to get global warming under control.

Germany, an export-led powerhouse in a Europe plagued by financial crisis, has clean energy laws and almost 400,000 jobs in renewables. With the right plan, Australia too could be a hi-tech, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing world leader.

In fact, by putting money into clean energy, the package we negotiated in the last Parliament is supporting wind farms in Victoria and solar plants in New South Wales right now. Meanwhile, the Coalition's tin-pot direct action policy has been criticised for not being "investment grade".

Why not create jobs installing solar panels, which will bring down power bills to boot? Why shouldn't we start making electric cars here in Australia, instead of letting our skills, plants and machinery disappear? Why not build high-speed rail on the east coast, creating jobs in manufacturing?

Abbott and Costello keep telling us the best plan is not to have one and we should flog the country off to the same people who brought us the GFC and hope for the best. But without a long-term plan for the future, we may wake up when the mining boom is over to find we're a hollowed-out uneducated quarry with nothing to sell the rest of the world.

Australia has some great strengths, like tourism, research and manufacturing, but they need support. For example, we have some of the world's best health and medical researchers, yet governments routinely threaten their budgets and the "brain drain" takes some of our best and brightest overseas.

Amazingly, we could boost our industries without asking everyday Australians to pay a single dollar more. Did you know that when you fill up your car, you're paying 38c a litre tax, but wealthy miners like Gina Rinehart get a 32c-a-litre rebate on their diesel fuel, courtesy of the taxpayer? You are paying $2.2 billion a year so that wealthy "end the age of entitlement" miners can get subsidised fuel. Why not cut that obscene corporate welfare for miners and put the money into medical research, tourism or advanced manufacturing?

Tasmania's economy is diversifying like never before. But the Liberals' old-school corporate welfare, promoting unpopular pet projects like the pulp mill and logging native forests, will hold it back and reduce its competitiveness.

Costello fails to mention the Liberals are also sharpening the knife to cut penalty rates, but he does suggest that Tasmania's share of the GST is too high, which could slice billions from the state's Budget. Abbott's carbon tax rollback has already cost Tasmania at least $100m. Are public sector cuts, job cuts at CSIRO and sending chainsaws in to log the new UNESCO World Heritage Area to follow?

We need a long-term vision to create jobs and share prosperity. That just won't happen under the Liberals.

Adam Bandt is the Greens' deputy leader and industry spokesman