Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. Minister, when will you stop approving new coal and gas projects?

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the only time I get positive interjections from those opposite!

I want to thank the member for his question and I want to remind him of the strong new climate safeguard laws that we introduced on this side—that we negotiated with him and with others on the crossbench, and which this parliament passed some time ago—which say that coal and gas projects must comply with Australia's commitment to reaching net zero. We are approving more renewable energy projects than ever before. Just last week, our government approved the biggest battery project in Asia—one of the largest in the world. The week before that it was a massive new solar farm in Queensland that will produce enough power to power 200,000 homes—that's a city the size of Townsville. In fact, we have ticked off about 37 renewable energy projects since coming to government and we have about another 103 in the pipeline.

This is an enormous transformation of our energy sector. It is an enormous transformation, bigger than anything since the industrial revolution. I want to remind the member that you were part of designing this. Together we designed the safeguard mechanism. We voted for it, you voted for it, and we got it through the parliament because we are all committed to reaching—well, not all of us, sorry, but we are!—net zero. You want to do it, we want to do it, and that's why we are approving these renewable energy projects. It is also about, as well as our strong new climate laws, our target of net zero in law by 2050, our 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030, our 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. We've doubled renewable energy approvals. We've supported cheaper electric vehicles, higher fuel efficiency standards, massive upgrades to our energy transmission lines so that they can take the new solar, the new wind and the new hydro power. We've approved help for homes and businesses to get off gas and on to electricity and $2 billion for green hydrogen.

The reason we are doing all of this is that we know that we need to continue on a pathway to cheaper, cleaner renewable energy, powering homes and businesses. It is better for family budgets, it's better for the costs of businesses and, of course, it's also much better for the environment.