Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The election in Queensland has drawn into focus the alternative of the Greens. Last year the Labor member for Indooroopilly, Ronan Lee, left the Labor Party and became a Greens MP. He is a serving Greens MP for that seat of Indooroopilly. The reason he has done that, which he has stated publicly and to me privately, is simply that the Queensland government—and the opposition is no exception to this—simply cannot capitalise on the magnificent environment of Queensland and what it offers the people of Queensland in terms of economic and employment advantages for the future. And he is right.

I had the pleasure of launching with him a week ago a plan for 7,600 green-collar jobs in Queensland. The difference between that and what we have heard from the previous two submissions to the Senate is that this is based on real programs which involve skilling people to have jobs which will be long term and which they will enjoy—which will give them fulfilment. The LNP and the Labor Party back the heavy industrial and resource mining industry of the past—to wit, the coal mining industry. That is an industry which is in severe trouble now, not because of any Greens insurgency but because of the neo-liberal policies which the big parties have subscribed to in the past and which have come home to roost in Queensland.

There is a downturn and we are now hearing members from both sides of old politics saying, ‘Well, you should put off the tackling of climate change as a policy which is going to protect the environment, economy and employment of the future, because it might worsen the impact of the recession.’ But the recession is now claiming hundreds if not thousands of mining jobs in Queensland and we are hearing nothing from the big corporations about their responsibility to look after those people who are dispossessed of jobs or about the need to reskill those people.

I went to the Bowen Basin in Queensland to speak about this issue two years ago and pointed out that it was the Greens who were aware of this change in the economy and who would legislate to ensure that people in very vulnerable industries like mining and resource extraction were skilled for the new future, which is going to be in the green industries. One of those industries which Ronan Lee and Larissa Waters—the very skilled young woman who is standing in Mount Coot-tha and who is the Green Senate candidate—are promoting in the run up to this election is the solar industry.

Clean coal, which the big parties subscribe to, does not exist; it is not available. People like Ziggy Switkowski have said that clean coal is at least two decades away. But the base load solar power is available now—and I am talking about the sunshine state! As has been promoted by the Greens, power stations near cities like Cairns and Townsville—and indeed in South-East Queensland, as in New South Wales—are able to produce power from the sun morning, noon and night without worsening global warming, which the coal industry and the burning of fossil fuels do.

And the green industries are jobs rich. The Greens have proposed in Queensland—as we have nationally—that they will use their wherewithal on the floor of the Queensland state parliament to pursue the policy of having every house in Queensland retrofitted with solar hot water and insulation and will help them to get solar power. And we would have the proper gross feed-in tariffs laws to enable people who do put in solar power to be rewarded for that power—to get a stimulus from it, rather than have the rewards and the subsidies go to the old fossil fuel industries.

The Greens are strongly defending Queensland’s environment and would bring an end to the clearance of life-rich, high-conservation-value native forest woodlands. That would have a massive double bonus. It would end the polluting impact of the clearance of woodlands, which puts massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Of course it is the Greens who are the great defenders of the Great Barrier Reef—against not only the runoff which is threatening the Great Barrier Reef but also the impacts of climate change.

I have to acquaint the Senate again with the real figures here. Last time I looked, there were 28,000 jobs in the coal industry. It is a very important industry but it is largely foreign owned and it made $43 billion in the last year I looked. But the coal industry is getting all the subsidies from state and federal Labor governments as well as Liberal-National Party interests. The threat of that industry is to the Great Barrier Reef which, according to the Deputy Premier of Queensland, sustains 63,000 jobs. Now scientists tell us that with the current trajectory of climate change there is a huge risk that a massive amount of the reef will be dead by mid-century. I am talking about the jobs and lifetimes of our children and certainly their children. This is a very real, present threat.

If ever that needed to be brought home, it was brought home by this disastrous oil and chemical spill off the Queensland coast, which is now being endured by the people of Queensland. As I said in this chamber yesterday, if it is true what Labor said in defence of this ship leaving Newcastle and sailing with this dangerous cargo into cyclone affected waters, that we do not have laws in this country to regulate foreign shipping in such circumstances, we Greens will at the first opportunity move to amend those laws so that we not only have the oversight of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority but are able to implement it. If that is true, and the government used that as a defence here yesterday, it is absurd. I do not care what the international law is; this nation has a right—