Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Climate crisis: what is it about those two words that just does not compute for this government? On Monday I met with a delegation of Tiwi Islands traditional owners and lawyers from the Environmental Defenders Office. I was so impressed and moved by these remarkable people heroically trying to protect Tiwi traditional heritage and the future for all our children and grandchildren. The Tiwi Islands TOs and the EDO are fighting a David and Goliath battle to stop what can only be described as a climate bomb: the Santos Barossa gas project. Make no mistake, the Goliath in this battle is Santos and the Australian government.

The Barossa project is arguably the most dire of all the murderous LNG projects in Australia, supported and indeed encouraged by this government. I describe the Barossa project as the most dire and here's why: the LNG in the Barossa gas field contains far more CO2 than is actually usable. That means millions of tons of CO2 will need to be pumped directly into the atmosphere without even being burned for energy. The Barossa gas field has been aptly described as a CO2 emissions factory with an LNG by-product. It gets worse. This destructive climate bomb project doesn't even stack up economically. The gas from Barossa will be so incredibly dirty that it will be hard to sell to other countries. For this the government is selling out our children's health and future. If that is not a definition of insanity and cruelty, I don't know what is.

Even after witnessing a truly terrifying year of this government acting like the political wing of the fossil fuel industry, its support for this destructive project is next-level shocking. The sea dumping bill that passed this House last week, with only the Greens and crossbench opposing, appears designed to directly assist Santos to obtain approvals by using extremely questionable carbon capture and storage technology. The resources minister, who, as we know, receives private jet flights and other gifts from the resources lobby, has also initiated—to add insult to injury—a review into traditional owners' consultation rights after the Tiwi Islanders successfully took Santos and the regulator to court over the failure to consult with them.

In Darwin, we have the Middle Arm project, which is receiving $1.5 billion in federal government funding. That's your taxpayer dollars funding a project that will make climate change worse and will, as we've heard from the delegation of NT doctors here this week, affect the health of children. I certainly don't want a cent of my tax dollars financing global warming and the development of long-term serious illness in children while apparently we can only fund a maximum of a mere $500 million a year for housing. These are baffling priorities. Labor tells us the Middle Arm project is about developing new technologies and using gas as a transition fuel—clearly, fossil fuel industry lines gaslighting Australians. FOI documents show that advice was provided to the government that the Middle Arm project was essential for unlocking the Northern Territory's gas fields, including Beetaloo, the beneficiary of bipartisan supported public funding. This is criminal behaviour from a government completely in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

It's not just the corporate donations; It's the revolving door of personnel. It's the infiltration of these corporations right into the heart of government, to their clear advantage. They have had eye-watering profits: Santos made over $3 billion of profit last year; BP made $2 billion last year; Chevron made over $12 billion; Shell made $4 billion last year; Woodside made nearly $10 billion—all profiteering off the worsening climate crisis to little advantage to Australians. They mine our resources and send most of their profits overseas. From 1987 to today, the percentage of revenue the government receives from oil and gas has fallen from 57 per cent to just seven per cent. That is slim compensation for the price we all pay for more frequent and severe bushfires and floods, which will worsen.

That's lots of bad news—sorry! The good news is that we still have time to act to prevent catastrophic warming, urgently. We need to stop opening new coal and gas now. Imagine imposing a windfall tax on these companies and investing the proceeds into renewable energy, battery storage, developing green hydrogen and green steel technology and creating new export markets for Australian clean energy and manufacturing. More than anything, for any chance of a safe future, we need to stop opening new coal and gas now.

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