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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Let me read you a quote:

There is growing agreement between economists and scientists that…risk of catastrophic and irreversible disaster is rising, implying potentially infinite costs of unmitigated climate change, including, in the extreme, human extinction.

Who was it who said that? Was it the many thousands of people who took to the streets over the weekend to protest about climate change and the government's inaction? Was it members of political parties here in this place, urging the government to take action? It was the IMF. It was the IMF who said this, barely weeks ago. There is now growing consensus, and not just across everyday Australian citizens, who at the moment are petitioning this government to declare a climate emergency. It is not just coming from our leading scientists, who are saying, 'Time is running out.' It is coming from some of the most senior economists in the global financial system.

It is time to tell it like it is. We are in a climate emergency and we are facing a mass extinction, including human civilisation. Had the Prime Minister gone to the global climate crisis summit barely a few weeks ago, he would've heard the stark warning from the world's scientists that the current commitments under the Paris agreement are not good enough. We need to do at least three to five times as much as countries like Australia are currently pledging if we are to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming. That's three to five times as much as what we are doing at the moment.

The world's scientists also told us last year that, because coal—especially in Australia—is the single-biggest contributor to climate change, we cannot continue our reliance on coal. In fact, they told us that, to have a chance of staying below a dangerous 1½ degrees, the world needs to be at least two-thirds out of coal for energy by 2030. That is why the time for coal is over, and that is why Australia needs a plan to quit coal. That's why today I'm introducing the Coal Prohibition (Quit Coal) Bill 2019. We're talking here about thermal coal—the coal that is burnt for electricity. Australia exports about 80 per cent of its thermal coal. About four times as much as we use domestically, burning it for power, we send overseas. It doesn't matter where it's burnt, because global warming impacts us all. Until we stop exporting coal, we will not be able to halt the climate crisis.

It is clear to everyday Australians that global warming is not under control. From the record drought that we are experiencing and that our farmers and communities are suffering through, and from the fact that towns are being told they might have to go without water, to the unprecedented numbers of fish kills and the numbers of people who are dying from heatwaves and bushfires, it is clear that the climate crisis is hitting, and it's hitting us hard. If Australia does not have a plan to exit from coal in an orderly way, we are going to make global warming worse, and that is a death sentence for people working on the land. It will mean more people will die from the heatwaves and bushfires that will hit, it will mean water will run out at a quicker rate and it will mean more extreme weather events.

This bill puts in place a plan that says thank you to all of those workers in coal communities, who have helped power our country. But we now know things about coal that we didn't know before. We now know that it's a toxic product, and when you use it as intended it kills. We need to do what Germany has done: reach an agreement in this parliament for a plan for the orderly phase-out of coal, one that will look after the affected communities. That means phasing it out at home. It means phasing out our exports. This bill puts in place a plan to do that over the next 10 years in a way that is achievable and in a way that the science requires. In my remaining time, I would invite the seconder for this bill, the member for Clark, to make a few comments.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and offer a few additional comments. It's self-evident that Australia must do everything in its power to combat climate change and to do so urgently, and any sensible strategy surely must include Australia banning any new coalmines and winding down existing coalmines.

The significance of this must not be underestimated. We need to understand that something like 29 per cent of coal that's traded globally comes from Australia. When we export coal, we export emissions. When you include our exported emissions with our domestic emissions, you understand that we are a very, very significant producer of greenhouse gases. In fact, if you include our exported emissions, Australia produces more emissions than Russia, a country of 146 million people, hardly an exemplar of responsible climate action. We create more carbon emissions than Russia. In fact, when you include our exported emissions, our total gross emissions are not much less than those of India, a country of 1.3 billion people. In other words, we must do everything we can to get out of the global coal trade, and that must include no more coalmines and winding down existing coalmines.

This is especially relevant to me as a Tasmanian at the moment because we had the remarkable revelations just in recent weeks that, when the country is talking about shutting down coalmines, we're actually looking to create a new coalmine. In fact, we had the remarkable revelation just recently that Midland Energy has been granted $50,000 by the Tasmanian government to establish mines in the Midlands of Tasmania, around Woodbury and Jericho, that would produce three million tonnes of coal a year for export to Asian markets. How the Tasmanian government can think that that is sensible absolutely beggars belief. Tasmania has a reputation as a relatively clean and green place. Why would we put our food exports and our tourism industries at risk by becoming just another global climate pariah? It beggars belief, and it's some of the most irresponsible behaviour I could contemplate by a Tasmanian government.

So I'm very happy to back the member for Melbourne in this motion for the second reading of the Coal Prohibition (Quit Coal) Bill 2019, which would ban coalmines and wind down existing coalmines. It would be entirely consistent with what should be this country's strategy—a strategy to, within a reasonable period of time, achieve zero net carbon emissions and, indeed, 100 per cent reliance on renewable energy. That's the way to deal with the future. It's not to be opening new coalmines in the Midlands of Tasmania, North Queensland, the Hunter Valley or who knows where else. That's why this is an eminently sensible bill introduced by the member for Melbourne.

I would add that until now the philosophy has been progress at any cost. Whenever there's talk of a new coalmine, politicians are quick to talk about the jobs. Well, it's time to draw a line in the sand and to understand that progress at any cost is the strategy that has created the climate mess we now have. So we've got to draw a line in the sand, or perhaps scratch a line in the coal, and say that from now on there will be no more new coalmines, we will have plans in place to shut down existing coalmines and we will have plans in place to shut down existing coal-fired power stations in this country, because only by doing that will we genuinely be putting our country on a pathway to zero net carbon emissions. That's what the community expects of us. Whenever you go out to the community across the whole of the country and you do polling, the evidence is unambiguous that the community wants strong action on climate change. But regrettably, until now, this place has been completely out of step with what the community wants—another case where we in this place are not representing our community. So I second the motion, I applaud the member for Melbourne and I think that the crossbench—or most of the crossbench at least—speaks genuinely on behalf of the majority of Australians, who want us to get out of the coal industry and to get out of it quickly.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.