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

I'm always very pleased to follow the member for Griffith, but it's astounding that I'm coming straight after him, because ordinarily on bills like this, especially government bills, you'd expect someone from Labor to jump up in between. Someone speaks for it; someone speaks against it. Not one single Labor backbencher or member of Parliament and the minister has had the guts to come in here and speak to this bill.

I can tell you who has spoken to the bill: the Liberals. The Liberals got up and said, 'This is the bill we've been calling for, so we're going to vote for it.' This is a bill designed by Santos, the gas corporation, the fossil fuel industry and the Liberal Party, but drafted by Labor and put to parliament to fast-track gas projects and take away First Nations voices.

I want to tell you about Dennis Tipakalippa. He is an elder and a senior lawman and a traditional owner of the Munupi clan, and he lives on the Tiwi Islands. Santos wanted to come and still wants to come and build a massive gas project in his clan's sea country. Mr Tipakalippa has been brave enough to take on the massive gas giant Santos and take them to court. He took them to court and won. The Full Court of the Federal Court, when it went on appeal, backed him up. They said 'Yes, you are right.' What was a court case about? It was about him on behalf of his people, the First Nations traditional owners, saying, 'If you want to do this, then under existing law you need to come and consult me.' Do you know what Santos said when it went to court? Santos said, 'No, he's not a relevant person under the law. We don't have to consult him.' That is what they argued. 'We don't have to talk to First Nations owners and listen to their voices.' The court disagreed.

But then Santos went and complained to the minister and wrote her a letter and said, referencing this court decision, 'These terrible court decisions that these First Nations people keep winning are tying us up too much. You need to change the law.' They referenced another court decision from one of their mates in Woodside, where Raelene Cooper, a custodian of Murujuga in north-west Western Australia, took Woodside to court. They wanted to start seismic testing on her sea country. The court backed her and said, 'Yes, you can't just go ahead without properly consulting them. You've got to sit down and do it. Santos said that was terrible as well: these court decisions that these are First Nations and traditional owners keep winning, where, heaven forbid, they demand the right to be consulted, are slowing down our multibillion-dollar gas projects on their Country, projects that are huge climate bombs, that these First Nations people are saying they have the right to be heard about and to oppose.

What does the minister do after getting this letter from Santos? The minister says, 'Sure; I am prepared to change the rules so that the consultation requirements can be weakened and First Nations voices don't have to be listened to in the way that the court has said they have to. You know what the minister said? The current consultation system is unworkable. The Full Court of the Federal Court said the rules are workable. They are working for the First Nations owners, who get to be heard. They're not working for Santos or the Woodside, because they have to go and talk to First Nations owners. The minister says, 'I don't care.' And the minister brings this piece of legislation to the parliament.

What does this piece of legislation do? It says that even the weak consultation rights that First Nations people have, under a plan that was put in place by John Howard, can now be ignored if the resource minister says so. The resource minister gets to say 'You do not have to comply with the consultation and the other rules that were put in place by John Howard if I so decide.' The minister gets to decide that the basic rights of consultation no longer apply. Why? Because Santos has asked for it. This is from a government that said it wanted to hear First Nations voices, that took the country to a referendum. We campaigned together with the government for a successful 'yes' vote, and we shared the disappointment when we couldn't put into our Constitution a provision that said there will be a voice for First Nations peoples. We took the Prime Minister and the government at face value when they said they wanted to hear what First Nations voices have to say. It seems that promise was paper thin because the first piece of legislation about First Nations consultation and rights that the government is bringing to this parliament is one that takes away the rights that First Nations peoples have, because the big corporations have asked for it. It is no wonder the race baiters and climate deniers in the coalition are lining up to support the bill. Doesn't that tell you something, Labor—that the support you're getting for this is from the climate deniers in the coalition who spread misinformation to defeat the Voice in the first place?

Why is Labor breaking an election promise and working with the climate deniers and race baiters in the coalition to weaken our environment laws, fast-track gas projects and take away First Nations voices? That's what this legislation does. I suspect a bunch of people in Labor didn't know about it when it was slipped through by the resources minister, because this is one schedule in an act that's about worker safety. The legislation we're debating here is about worker safety. The caucus was probably told that this is a worker safety bill, but buried in it is this provision that lets the resources minister write a great big exemption for the gas giants in this country to go ahead and do whatever they want to do. Even though the Federal Court has said it's illegal, even though laws John Howard put in place would have said it's illegal, they get a free pass and get to work around all that thanks to this Labor government. This is at a time when some people in northern New South Wales haven't been able to get back into their homes since the floods, when people in Queensland fear every time the weather gets hot or when there are reports of more storms because it could mean they lose their homes yet again to extreme weather events. It comes at a time when, over summer, in some parts of this country, the temperature didn't drop at night for consecutive nights in a row and parents struggled to get their kids to bed and elderly people suffered just as they did during the Black Summer, when more people died from the heatwaves than from the tragic bushfires.

We are hurtling towards climate catastrophe. The UN Secretary-General has said we are in an era of global boiling. A 1½ degree target our Pacific island neighbours are pleading with us to meet may well be breached, and that means goodbye to their homes. As we are told, a bare minimum for tackling the climate crisis is to stop opening new coal, oil and gas projects because there's just not enough room in the atmosphere to put more climate pollution in it. What does Labor do? Labor brings a bill to this parliament to fast-track new gas climate bombs. Labor says: 'We care about climate. We're passing electric vehicle legislation.' I tell you what: even just one new big gas project approved under this fast-track law that Labor and the Liberals are ramming through will wipe out all the gains from the electric vehicle projects and legislation. Approving just one new gas project under this law is the equivalent of ripping solar panels off four million roofs in this country.

We're saying to Labor very clearly: enough of the greenwashing, and enough of saying you want to put more electric cars on the road and solar panels on people's roofs, while quietly doing a dirty deal with the Liberals to fast-track new gas projects that cook people's future. There can be no new coal and gas projects for us to have any chance of having a safer climate. The decisions we make now will reverberate for generations because the thing about the climate crisis is that once we breach a certain threshold, and the planet gets too hot, climate change becomes runaway. Our kids and our grandkids won't be able to rein it in. It will be too late. The decisions that we make now, right here in this parliament, will determine what life is like for our kids and our grandkids. It will determine what life is like for primary school students alive today as to whether or not parts of this country become uninhabitable during their lifetime.

Just think about that: the decisions that we make now will determine whether parts of this country are habitable for kids at primary school right now. This is an emergency. We need to be pulling out all stops. And what does Labor do? Labor brings forward a law to fast-track new oil and gas projects. Astounding! People will look back at this in decades and go: 'We can't believe Labor and the Liberals did that. What was Labor thinking to fast-track new gas projects in the middle of a climate crisis?'

When we came into this parliament, when the Liberals were turfed out because of their climate denial and Labor came in promising climate action and we got more third voices in this parliament than ever before off the back of people wanting climate action, I thought, perhaps naively, that the debates we'd be having with Labor would be how quickly we were going to get there—and we'd want to go as quickly as the science demanded, and Labor wouldn't, and we'd have a debate and maybe meet somewhere in the middle. What I didn't expect was that Labor would do a dirty deal with the Liberals to make it easier to open new gas projects and put more climate pollution into the atmosphere. But that's what they're doing.

The first step in tackling a problem is to stop making the problem worse. You can't put the fire out while you are pouring petrol on it. There's a reason the world's scientists are saying that we can't open any new coal, oil and gas projects. There's a reason the International Energy Agency said that a couple of years ago was the time we had to stop building new projects. There's a reason the UN Secretary-General is pleading with us to stop opening new coal, oil and gas projects. There's a reason our Pacific island neighbours are pleading with Australia to stop opening new coal and gas projects. It's because we are in a climate emergency, and the decisions that we make now will determine whether or not we get out of it.

Labor, don't come here and pretend to care about climate change. Don't come here as climate con artists and say, 'We're going to put more solar panels on roofs,' and then rip the equivalent of four million roofs worth of solar panels off by approving one new gas project. There are 116 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline. Through safeguard negotiations and pressure, the Greens managed to stop about half of them by putting a hard cap on pollution. But what is becoming clear is that Labor is hell-bent on opening the rest of them.

As we head towards the final year of this parliament, what you're seeing is this: you're seeing Labor work with the Liberals on migration, Labor working with the Liberals on discrimination, Labor working with the Liberals on climate. I've got a message for you: have a look at what happened over the weekend in South Australia and in Tasmania. Have a look at the fact that at the last election Labor's vote went backwards and the coalition's vote went backwards. People want this parliament to start acting for the public interest, not for the big corporate interests. Your vote's going to keep going backwards. Labor and the Liberals can prop it up by doing dirty deals across the aisle on political donations and the political system, to try to rig it in their favour, or on migration, in a race to the bottom, or to fast-track new oil and gas projects. The more you do that, the more people are going to see through you and demand what they demanded in Tasmania, what they demanded in South Australia and what they demanded at the last election.

It is time to stop opening coal and gas projects, listen to First Nations voices in this country and ditch this bill. (Time expired)

See this speech in context