Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We're running out of time. We're running out of time to stop runaway climate change. What this government should be doing is bringing bills to parliament to fast-track the phase-out of coal and gas, and, at the very least, ban new coal and gas. Instead, what this parliament is debating is a bill that will effectively make it easier for large gas projects to be approved in Australia and that will override the opposition, in particular, of First Nations groups, who have put up a remarkable fight against really large gas projects in this country.

This is genuinely remarkable. It's remarkable when the science is telling us that, right now, we are on the brink of global catastrophe. Over the last few years, Australia has already been smashed by record awful, destructive bushfires that have tragically taken lives, devastating floods, devastating heatwaves, and droughts in some parts of the country at the same time. What this government should be doing is looking at how to stop any new massive gas projects. We know Santos has written to the Minister for Resources asking for changes along these lines, changes that will make it easier for gas corporations to bypass existing, already very weak environmental laws. Now, just as we're debating sea surface temperatures around the world reaching record heights, and just as we're on the brink of a climate catastrophe, where people have already lost lives, we stand here trying the best we can to delay a bill that will allow projects like Santos's Barossa project, a giant gas carbon bomb. Just as we're trying to stop that, this is a bill that will make it easier for it that be approved.

One of the things this government likes to attempt to do is to pretend that Australia doesn't have much of a role to play in stopping climate change—'We're just a small part player'—except for the fact that Australia is the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world. There are two countries ahead of us, Saudi Arabia and Russia—not exactly auspicious company, is it?

The role Australia could be playing in combating dangerous, destructive, deadly global heating could be world leading. We could be sending a signal to the world and saying that we will not open a single new gas or coal project. We could be sending a signal to the world saying that we will tax existing coal and gas projects and raise money that could be spent on phasing out coal and gas in this country, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and lifting people out of poverty. Instead, we're in parliament, and the government is trying to rush through a bill that will make it more likely and easier for Santos to get giant carbon-bomb gas projects approved.

Future generations are going to look back at moments like this and ask: 'What was this parliament doing? What was this parliament doing when billions of climate refugees are on the move, when global food systems are collapsing, when entire ocean ecosystems are dying, and when large areas in places like my home state of Queensland are considered uninhabitable because of the heat and humidity in the summer in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time?' They're going to look back at moments like this and ask, 'Why was a Labor government attempting to pass a bill that makes it easier for gas projects to continue to destroy our climate?'

These gas corporations, by the way, wield enormous political power over our political system. Santos, we know, has been a large and generous donor to the Labor Party both at a federal level and at a state level. Gas corporations like this have gotten their way. I mean, we're in a housing crisis, right? We could be debating an urgent bill to tackle the housing crisis. Instead, we're debating an urgent bill to give gas corporations more power. These gas corporations, by the way, are some of the most profitable in the world and barely pay any tax because of a tax regime and a new gas tax that was written with gas executives in the room. We are a country that is now run by gas corporations. They get whatever they want, regardless of the human consequences or the costs to the environment, to our climate or to people's lives.

This government should be ashamed that it's fallen to the Greens to fight a rearguard action to try and stop a bill that will ride roughshod over First Nations voices in the same term of government that they claimed to care and try to get the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice passed. On the one hand they want to give First Nations people a voice, but on the other they want to silence First Nations people when it comes to standing up to massive gas corporations.

If the government claims that this won't do what the Greens are claiming then let it go through a committee process. Let the experts come in. Let's actually properly scrutinise this, not try and rush it through on a day when we're already experiencing a massive climate catastrophe. It should be alarming to members of the public that stuff like this can happen without proper scrutiny, without proper debate. The government aren't even willing to stand up and defend their own bill. They're trying to claim: 'There's nothing to see here. Nothing's changing. Don't worry. We're not really doing anything.' If that's the case, why move the bill at all? That's the thing, right? On the one hand you're claiming, no, this won't change anything. Well, if that's the case, don't change anything. The reality is that what this does, at the behest of gas corporations like Santos, is give them more power to bulldoze over the top of First Nations communities and those Australians who are trying their very best to stop the madness of the major parties, who, in the middle of a climate catastrophe being caused by coal and gas, are trying to open up more coal and gas projects.

Future generations will remember this. They'll look back at moments like this and they'll think, 'What were you doing?' This government should be ashamed that it has fallen to the Greens to try and stop this madness.

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