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

[by video link] Yesterday we heard two truly earth-shattering and climate-threatening revelations out of Senate estimates. First, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that we are on track for 4.4 degrees of warming in Australia. That is a hell on earth, and it means civilisation will collapse. Then, later, the government admitted that gas is far dirtier than previously thought. But instead of changing their plan after listening to the science, like a responsible government would, they decided to retrospectively change their own targets and rewrite the rules to allow them to pollute even more.

This government of climate criminals' disastrous plan to open up five new gas basins, which Labor backs, will blow Australia's carbon budget. By our estimates, an extra 150 million tonnes of climate pollution will be released into the atmosphere, above what was originally estimated, worsening global heating and sending us further back from a safe climate. The government has been caught doing 200 kilometres an hour in a 60 zone, and instead of slowing down it's lifting the speed limit. We're hurtling towards the end of a cliff. We should be slamming on the brakes and changing direction, but the government is putting its foot on the gas.

The glaciers won't be fooled by this accounting trick, and nor will the countless Australians who are still dealing with the fallout from the black summer bushfires. Gas is as dirty as coal, and the more of it we burn the more likely frequent and intense bushfires will become. The good news is that solutions already exist. A Green New Deal will power our recovery from this pandemic— (Time expired)