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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is a bill for every tourism business that's struggling because of the recent climate fires or our dying reef, for every farmer suffering through record drought and everyone who lost their home in raging infernos this summer.

This is a chance for justice for everyone bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and a chance to make the polluters pay for some of the costs of their pollution, because the polluters knew decades ago the economic harm they would cause to businesses, families and communities everywhere, but they went ahead and did it. And, just as the law caught up with asbestos and tobacco companies, now it is catching up with the climate polluters too.

In the last few months Australia has endured megafires of a scale we have never seen before. It was made possible because of a prolonged deep drought. We've had dust storms, heatwaves, floods and hail storms. We've had smoke over our two biggest cities and our capital city for days on end.

Estimates of the damages from these disasters range from $4.4 billion, if we narrowly define damage to physical assets and infrastructure, up to a more credible $100 billion, if we include tourism losses, human health and ecological destruction.

Not surprisingly, people who lost their homes and businesses and people who were injured or lost family members are asking the question: who is to blame?

This is the same question that many people around the world who are also being hit hard by climate impacts are asking.

The answer is thermal coal, oil and gas companies. Their business of mining, fracking, burning and exporting their products has turbocharged these natural disasters. They have been profiting from their pollution. With the brief exception of two years during the carbon price, they have never had to pay a cent for the damage that they are inflicting on society.

Minister Hunt and Minister Dutton and former ministers O'Dwyer, Brough and Pyne are famously photographed celebrating the legislation that abandoned these polluters having to pick up some of the tab for their carnage and pushed it on to taxpayers.

People feel helpless, they feel anxious and they feel frustrated at politicians who are protecting their political donors and are not doing what needs to be done to keep the Australian community safe.

Increasingly, they are turning to courts to pursue the big fossil fuel corporations, which have known about the threat of the climate crisis, yet have kept on polluting regardless.

ClientEarth has partnered with Torres Strait Islander peoples to take the Australian government to court for rising sea levels and inundation of their land and fresh water.

Then there is Mark McVeigh, who will not be able to access his superannuation until 2055, who is taking his super fund, Rest, to court because climate risks are manifesting now and the time lines for his investment horizon mean that investing in fossil fuels is a breach of Rest's fiduciary duties to invest on his behalf.

This bill, the Liability for Climate Change Damage (Make the Polluters Pay) Bill 2020, will ensure that victims of the bushfire crisis and victims of other climate impacts will have a pathway to hold corporations responsible for the damage that they have caused.

In October 2016, Noel Hutley SC issued a legal advice on climate change and the responsibilities on company directors. He said that, in his opinion, section 181 of the Corporations Act—which puts a duty of care and diligence on directors—extends to them a responsibility to consider the risks of climate change.

The advice that climate change is a fiduciary duty has since been cited approvingly by our major regulators—ASIC, APRA and the Reserve Bank—who are all now working on their own regulatory frameworks to manage climate risk.

This bill will clarify the situation under Australian law. What this bill does is put it beyond legal doubt that the thermal coal, oil and gas companies are liable for the climate damage they have contributed to.

It will give survivors of natural disasters the legal right to bring an action against them for damages. It will allow businesses who have been hurt by the climate crisis to bring action against those who've contributed to it. It will allow farmers affected by the record drought to bring actions against those who have contributed to it.

It will allow the Federal Court to determine the amount of damages that the major emitters are liable for. When deciding, the court may assume that the major emitter's share of the climate change damage is at least the same as their proportion of greenhouse gas emissions, to total global greenhouse gas emissions, and may even apportion a higher share of damages if that's appropriate.

It will also give state and federal governments the right to seek reimbursement for the damage to public infrastructure, the expenses involved in responding to climate induced disasters, and the cost of analysing, monitoring and researching weather systems and our rapidly changing climate systems. This is fair. If you broke it, you buy it.

These companies have known what they have been doing and the damage they are causing, just like with big tobacco, who knew their cigarettes caused cancer for decades and kept on selling their deadly product, and just like with asbestos.

The playbook here has been exactly the same, in fact: sow doubt, deliberately spread misinformation about the damage caused by their products, buy off politicians with lucrative jobs and donations, spruik fake science, bury information, and intimidate your opponents.

The thermal coal, oil and gas corporations have followed tobacco and asbestos down that well-worn path, but they have infinitely more money, resources, media and political parties at their disposal. But the history is shocking.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly listed oil and gas producer, and one of Australia's largest emitters, had their own team of in-house scientists that was aware of the dangers of climate change as early as 1977—11 years before it became a public issue. These in-house scientists and researchers produced incredibly accurate predictions of the level of greenhouse gases and temperatures on what is playing out now.

In an internal memo from 15 May 1981, the President of ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Co. was briefed that, at predicted rates of fossil fuel growth, within 100 years there would likely be a three-degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures and a 10-degree Celsius rise in temperature at the poles. And they predicted, close to the degree, the temperature rise that we are on and experiencing at the moment. They knew. They predicted that this would lead to major shifts in rainfall and agriculture and could mean the potential melting of polar ice. They had high-level teams of well-resourced scientists who knew, as far back as 1980, what their products would do. They knew.

Later, on 24 June 1988, the front page of The New York Times declared that 'global warming has begun', with testimony of NASA's Jim Hansen to congress. The earth was warmer in those first five months of that year than any comparable period since measurements began 130 years earlier. The record of 1988 as the hottest year on record has been broken 10 times more since then. They knew.

In 1990 the first ever assessment report was handed down by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The global, widespread dissemination of climate science was clearly in the public arena from this date. This report helped establish the UN framework on climate change in 1992.

From that date onwards, there could be no doubt—everyone knew, including these companies. Yet more than half of the carbon pollution that we have put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution happened after this date—after we knew.

These companies knew with eyes wide open that their increasing profitability would mean higher temperatures and more extreme heatwaves. They knew about the risk of more severe droughts and bushfires. They knew what it would do to other businesses and economies like agriculture and tourism. They knew that it would lead to the melting of ice sheets, sea level rise and more extreme flooding from hotter moisture-holding air.

This time line matters because, under this bill, major fossil fuel producers and the owners and operators of coal-fired power stations will be liable in respect of all emissions since 1990, when the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released. Where the company had actual knowledge of the effect of the pollution, the time frame for liabilities will extend back to this point.

In conclusion, this bill is about justice. It's about bushfire survivors and tourism businesses. It's about protecting those whose livelihood depends on fertile soils, reliable water flows and a healthy Great Barrier Reef. It's about making sure that companies who have knowingly profited from the pollution that they have emitted pay for the damage that they cause.

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

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allocated 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.