Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the recent statement by the International Energy Agency that new coal, oil and gas projects must cease by 2021 to be able to reach net-zero by 2050; and

(2) calls on all Members of Parliament to act urgently on the International Energy Agency's warning.

The International Energy Agency is a conservative body that represents the coal, oil and gas industry, and they are giving us a warning. They are making it crystal clear: time is up. This statement hasn't come out of thin air, though. The world recognises that time is up. Time is up on new coal, new oil and new gas. It's time for pollution to start ratcheting down and for new renewables to go up.

In just the last month we've seen people killed in climate induced flash flooding across Europe and Asia. Across America and around the Mediterranean people are dying in climate fuelled fires. During a pandemic, we are seeing death and destruction from the climate crisis, the climate crisis which is being driven by coal, oil and gas.

This is not the first warning, but it is dramatic. It is far-reaching. It will send a powerful message to banks and investors that the jig is up—that, no, we cannot keep burning this stuff forever. But, here, Liberal and Labor are talking about opening up new gas projects in the Northern Territory, using public money to do it. In the Northern Territory, the Beetaloo Basin and the associated Northern Territory basins contain 68 years worth of Australia's pollution. It must say in the ground, but Labor and Liberal are talking about taking money that could be going to schools and hospitals and using it to open it up and make the climate crisis worse.

Why don't Liberal and Labor members get it? Banks get it; super funds and insurance agencies get it; state governments get it; firefighters, police and ambulance officers get it; kids get it. Why don't politicians get it? Is it the donations? Is it the millions of dollars that coal, oil and gas corporations shovel into the old parties' election funds that makes them wilfully blind, silent and complicit? Is it that simple? Is money all that it takes to pay off the government and the opposition to look the other way while a few coal and gas billionaires and big corporations wreck the only place that we've got to live in? Or is it the jobs, the jobs for the boys, the jobs for the former men of the Liberal and Labor parties, who, once they leave parliament, end up with the lobbyists or on the boards of the corporations poisoning our politicians with donations—the likes of Martin Ferguson, Ian Macfarlane, John Anderson and Mark Vaile? How well paid are these gigs that members are willing to sell every one of us out? Do they pay enough so that your conscience is clear?

Or are politicians just scared—scared of losing power after being attacked in the pages of News Ltd? How is it that fear of climate deniers like Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair is worse than the fear of our kids losing their lives? Or is it fear of the big corporations? In this country the big corporations have way too much power. They're like the drug cartels. They've addicted our politicians. They extort public cash and outrageous approvals. They get so much special treatment to railroad farmers, local communities and traditional owners, and they often pay no tax and send their profits offshore, tax-free.

But, members, we cannot deny the reality that we face. Members, you all know this. You might tell yourselves that it's not our problem, that there's nothing that you can do. But we all know the fires will be back. There will be more summers burnt by this government's and this opposition's failures. They know that politicians will be called out again and again on the world stage. Whenever this pandemic is over, the climate crisis will be there and it will keep getting worse. Young people have been forced to endure so much during this pandemic, and they have lost some of the best years of their lives to COVID and this government's failures. But now they are facing a climate crisis. And right now this government is going to court to argue that it doesn't have a duty of care to our children's future. It's clear that the coal, oil and gas corporations in this place have too much power, and you just need to look at the fact that they pay no tax as proof of that.

It is time to take responsibility. This is our decade for change. We must act. And the good news is: the next election is closer than we think. For a few hundred votes, we can kick this government out, put the Greens in balance of power and make the next government go further and faster on the climate crisis.

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