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

CHANDLER-MATHER () (): Last month was the planet's hottest month in recorded history. Wildfires have devastated Greece, Tunisia, Italy and Algeria. Antarctica is missing a Western Australia sized amount of sea ice, reaching the lowest levels at this time of year since records began. The heat waves in Europe have smashed crop yields. Sea temperatures around the world are soaring, threatening the collapse of ocean ecosystems. Australia is facing down the barrel of another season of devastating bushfires and heatwaves. This is global warming, and the Labor government knows what the major cause is: the burning of coal, oil and gas. But it appears that Labor doesn't care. Instead, Labor is proactively choosing the profits of the multinational coal, oil and gas corporations over the interests and the future of almost every Australian. I say 'almost every Australian' because, of course, the CEOs of Santos or Woodside get a pretty good deal out of this.

Let's break this down. Labor claim to believe in the science. Well, the science says you need to stop new coal and gas projects right now. The International Energy Agency, UN Secretary-General and IPCC have all been very clear on this fact. In fact, if we want any chance of limiting global warming to below even two degrees, we can't open up a single new coal and gas project. Australia has a big role to play here. We're the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, and Labor plan to expand Australia's fossil fuel exports every year and use public money to do it. You might hear them talk about their 43 per cent domestic emissions target and the safeguard mechanism. Frankly, that is utterly meaningless if Labor continue to accelerate the digging up and burning of coal, oil and gas.

To put this all in perspective: taking just the 116 new coal, oil and gas projects in the approval pipeline, if they were all approved, 1.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases would be released in the atmosphere annually, compared to Australia's domestic emissions of 490 million tonnes last year. In other words, just the new coal, oil and gas projects will release three times Australia's entire domestic emissions every single year, and that's before you get to Australia's existing coal, oil and gas projects. And yet Labor has approved three new coal projects in the last few months alone. The resource minister, when asked about this, said she was happy to support Australia's export of coal and gas indefinitely as long as the market wanted it.

Not only that; they're handing over $1.5 billion in public money for the Middle Arm project, which expands oil and gas production. They're writing gas taxes with gas execs in the room, and as a result we will see them raise more money indexing student debt than they will from this gas tax that the gas corporations now support.

Labor will run the defence for the fossil fuel industry by making solutions for climate change sound complicated, but it's simple enough: stop opening new coal, oil and gas projects. If you continue you to do so, you will accelerate a climate crisis that it is abundantly clear is getting worse right now. (Time expired)