Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The mining, transportation and burning of fossil fuels is the single biggest contributor to the climate crisis. If we want to avoid environmental and economic disaster by staying within 1.5 degrees of global heating, we must make real cuts to emissions and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy. One point five degrees—that number is not just a talking point. According to the world's scientists, it is a very real planetary boundary. If we breach it, our climate system is at risk of tipping over into spiralling chain reactions and we will no longer be able to control the climate breakdown. No area of our lives would be untouched by this—from our food supply, sending prices sky high; our hospital services being overrun; infrastructure damage, from sewage systems to flooding cities; and the loss of our precious natural landscape and wildlife. Climate damage is not some far-off, distant threat. We're already experiencing the shift, with 100-year bushfires and floods every few years. For us in the Brisbane electorate, the 2022 floods have left our community rebuilding for the last year now, with some local businesses only just being able to open their doors again, while others have been forced to close forever.

The government seems to just expect everyday people and volunteers to clean up the mess from natural disasters and to keep pushing, year in and year out, to survive. They rely on individuals, families and communities to bear the brunt of extreme and unpredictable weather. Meanwhile, they are funnelling billions in taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and making the climate crisis worse. Community members are taking on personal responsibility to reduce their individual emissions, like using reusable bags and paper straws and making choices about the foods they consume. Meanwhile the government allows the biggest polluters in the country to pay little to no tax, destroy our natural environment and then send us the bill. This is the only evidence you need to see whose side the government is on.

Governments only ever tinker around the edges when it comes to kicking their addiction to fossil fuels. They politely ask fossil fuel companies to just reduce their emissions, but this has not worked and it will never work. Their business model and method of profit come at the expense of our climate. This industry cannot regulate itself, and it is the government's responsibility to phase out fossil fuels to ensure our economy and climate are sustainable. The bill before us allows fossil fuel giants to offset 100 per cent of their emissions. If you think 100 per cent seems very high, that's because it is. The Climate Council thinks so too, stating that:

This is highly problematic because unlimited use of offsets will simply encourage carbon accounting to cover up pollution-as-usual. The design of the Safeguard Mechanism should prioritise genuine emissions reduction, because tackling harmful climate change means Australia's emissions must shrink rapidly this decade.

This bill does not do that. It allows for the facilities regulated by the proposed safeguard mechanism to have access to unlimited offsets. So what incentive is there for these facilities to actually reduce their emissions? Analysis by the Parliamentary Library found that the cost of buying offsets to comply with the new safeguard mechanism proposals, to the fossil fuel industry—

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