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

Let's be clear about what the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and the related bills are about. They're about facilitating the expansion of coal and gas, making coal and gas billionaires richer—giving them bigger profit margins—accelerating climate change and screwing over ordinary Australians and the billions of people across the world that will be impacted by devastating climate change. Labor has backed down on even promising to pass their already weak environmental laws and now are bowling up a bill that will allow for the expansion of coal and gas.

Let's talk about who's happy about this bill and this backdown. The Minerals Council of Australia is one of the supporters of this backdown and this bill. They happen to represent—they're the lobby group for—some of the largest coal and gas corporations in Australia and across the world. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia called the reforms 'better for business'—which is funny, because I assume that these bills were meant to be about being better for the environment. And don't take the Greens word for it. The Australian Conservation Foundation said they were 'frustrated and deeply disappointed' by this backdown. The Wilderness Society said the proposed EPA:

… lacks the independence and integrity needed to shield development and environmental decision-making from undue influence by vested interests.

Let's talk about undue influence by vested interests. We know, and the government's own department has said this, that the key destructive factor for Australia's environment, the key driver of climate change in Australia is the expansion of coal and gas. It accelerates climate change and destroys Australia's environment. And today, of all days, to have government members stand up in here and claim to care about climate change when the environment minister has just approved 151 new gas wells, a giant coal seam gas project for Senex, who are part-owned by Gina Rinehart's company, Hancock Prospecting—by the way, Senex, have made $1.2 billion of revenue in Australia and have not paid a single cent in tax. This is from publicly available ATO data. It's genuinely incredible.

Labor claim to care about the environment. Their plan is net zero by 2050, and yet they continue to approve coal and gas projects out past 2050. These 151 approved gas wells will be running out past 2080. We have already been told by the world's scientists that we are on track for exceeding 1.5 degrees of warming in the next few years. There's an 80 per cent chance of that happening in the next few years. Now that doesn't sound like much, 1.5, but the effects are going to be devastating and we are already feeling them in Australia: record heatwaves, bushfires, floods. Too often the victims of these are ordinary Australians who die tragic and awful deaths as a result of climate crises, as a result of floods and bushfires made worse by climate change, destruction of our local habitat, our natural habitat and the environment.

What is most remarkable is to hear Labor members in this place get up and talk about the effects of climate change, talk about the devastating effects of climate change, and then pretend—I don't know. Genuinely, I don't know. Either they pretend that they haven't heard it or they just have some sort of bizarre cognitive dissonance that separates the fact that the key driver of climate change is the expansion of coal and gas mines and that their government keeps approving and expanding coal and gas. You can't think about those two things at the same time and not realise there's some sort of contradiction.

The other thing the government does is try to claim Australia's a big part of a global order and they're all making efforts to stop climate change—except for the fact that Australia is one of the largest exporters of fossil fuels in the world. In fact, the only two countries ahead of us on the exportation of fossil fuels are Saudi Arabia and Russia—hardly welcome company. So that means that Australia has a crucial global role that it could play in tackling climate change. Instead, it is pouring more fuel on the fire and making climate change worse. How can they claim—the Labor Party, the government—on one hand that they care about the environment and they care about climate change when on the other hand they're actively pursuing decisions that are making the problem worse? How can you do that? How can the government do that?

Let's be clear about this bill. This bill will allow for the approval of new coal and gas projects and destroying local environments. The decision today by the environment minister—151 new gas wells—will bulldoze huge swathes of koala habitat before we get to the fact that gas has an impact. And let's be clear about the impact that gas has. The lie at the heart of the Future Gas Strategy is that somehow gas is cleaner than coal. Gas produces methane, and methane is literally 80 times more potent than CO2 at warming the planet. It is accelerating the rate of climate change in this country. And let's be clear about who this ultimately benefits, because this is the most sick thing: in the context of a massive cost-of-living crisis, in the context of an environmental crisis, the context of a climate crisis, the only people the expansion of gas is benefitting are billionaires, are big fossil fuel corporations who get away with paying barely any tax.

There's a claim, another complete mistruth—it's not factual; it's a lie—that Australia has a shortage of gas. Australia is the biggest exporter of gas in the world, or sometimes second-biggest behind Qatar. There's not a shortage of gas in this country. What happens right now is the gas gets mined and shipped overseas while accelerating climate change, while those same gas corporations often pay zero dollars in tax. In some years companies like Chevron, Santos and Woodside will make tens of billions of dollars in income and will pay, in dollar terms, less tax than a teacher.

Then we come to this backdown on environmental laws and this joke of a bill that, again, as is so typical of this government, makes it look like they're doing something verbally and rhetorically. But at the same time they are taking actions that are doing the complete opposite thing and accelerating climate change. Where does this end? If the government has its way, and the Labor and Liberal parties have their way—and let's be clear: no wonder it is getting harder to tell Labor and the Liberals apart, because this is basically a reheated Scott Morrison strategy—is the government really suggesting we're going to get to 2050 as the world punches past 2½ degrees warming, and as we have record numbers of heatwaves and billions of climate refugees moving across the world, the complete bleaching and death of our Great Barrier Reef and precious places in Australia, and the continued logging of native forests? Are we going to get through all that to 2050? And is the government really suggesting that, at that point, it's going to continue to expand coal and gas mining? There are coal projects that this Labor government in this term have approved that are due to function past 2070. How, on the one hand, can this government claim they support net zero by 2050 but then on paper approve coal and gas projects that go past 2050? Genuinely, it would be great to have an explanation for that.

What would an alternative pathway look like? We could be debating new environmental laws that have a climate trigger—that where approvals of new projects in Australia take place they need to take into account climate change because it is the biggest threat to our local environment. That seems pretty reasonable. I would argue it seems deeply illogical to the vast majority of Australians that we have environment laws that don't force the minister to take climate change into account. We could then ban the expansion of coal and gas—ban it right now. We could fairly tax our existing gas projects and our existing coal projects as we phase them out over time. We could collect trillions of dollars in revenue and use that to help people transition out of fossil fuels, to help build alternative wealth creating industries, to help tackle the cost-of-living crisis right now. Australia could do that. Countries like Norway have a sovereign wealth fund of over a trillion dollars because they fairly tax their resource industry. Over here we just have more fossil fuel billionaires.

That could be a pathway, but it would mean breaking the stranglehold fossil fuel corporations have over our political system. I don't think people realise just how powerful they are. We saw Labor make a promise, going to the election, to bowl up a series of pretty weak environmental reforms—and the government can't even agree to those. They've backed down on those at the behest of fossil fuel corporations—they were celebrated when they backed down by the Mineral Council, the chief lobby group of fossil fuel corporations—and now we have a situation where they're not going to be taxed at all, in some instances.

Some of the biggest and most powerful fossil fuel corporations in Australia, in some years, as they have last year and in previous years, have paid less tax in dollar terms than a nurse or a teacher in Australia, and they then encounter environmental laws that allow them to expand coal and gas out past 2050, accelerating climate change, and they wash their hands of the consequences. Are they going to be the ones that pay for the cleaning up after the next floods, bushfires and heatwaves? Are they going to be the ones having to pay for the next climate related deaths? Are they going to be the ones having to pay for the insurance people can't afford to pay any more on their homes, for rebuilding their homes and livelihoods, for rebuilding communities? Absolutely not. They'll continue to not pay any tax. They'll continue to get favourable laws.

We've seen situations in the past in this term of government where the head of Santos can write to the government and ask them to change the law to make it easier for their gas projects to be approved, and then months later the minister will go and do it. What about the people on low incomes right now who need poverty payments, with their payments currently forcing them to live in poverty, raised above the poverty line? What about renters who need a freeze or cap on rent increases? Could they write to the government and demand the government take serious action for them? Apparently they can try, but they'll be ignored because they don't have the financial power and weight that those fossil fuel corporations do. This is what this debate is about today. It would be great to hear one Labor member in this place get up and explain how it's possible to expand coal and gas mining past 2050 and still claim that this government cares about climate change or the environment.

Answer some of those questions! How can we tackle climate change if this government keeps approving and expanding coal and gas projects past 2050? How is it that the government of Australia, one of the biggest exporters of fossil fuels in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia, can claim they're tackling climate change when they're adding more fuel to that and expanding the exportation of fossil fuel corporations? How is it that you made a promise to the electorate about a series of environmental reforms that this government can't even keep? How is it that the only people celebrating this backdown and this bill that we're debating right now are the Minerals Council of Australia and other fossil fuel corporations? Answer those questions, and then maybe we'll start getting to the truth.

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