Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That the Turnbull government's commitment to Tony Abbott's UN Climate Targets that deny scientific realities will contribute to catastrophic global warming.

With our change of Prime Minister we have seen a complete absence of change to any of the policies that saw the downfall of the last Prime Minister. Prime Minister Turnbull is taking Tony Abbott's targets to the Paris climate conference in a few short weeks. With the change of government in Canada, that leaves Australia at the very back of the pack in terms of our commitment, based on the science, to do what is necessary to address global warming.

We have a wonderful climate change authority in this nation, which we Greens are proud to have helped establish under the former government: a science based, independent expert body that has said that in order for Australia to do its fair share to constrain global warming to less than two degrees—and I will come back to whether even that is adequate in a few moments—we would need to reduce our pollution by 40 to 60 per cent, importantly, based on 2000 levels of pollution. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott picked the highest year of Australia's emissions as his baseline year. He chose 2005 and then said he would commit Australia to reducing pollution levels by 26 to 28 per cent. When you convert that back to the year 2000, which most other countries use as their yardstick and which we have always used here in Australia, that is about a 19 per cent reduction. The Climate Change Authority, as I have said, said the bare minimum was 40 to 60 per cent. Our former Prime Minister, continued by this Prime Minister, has said 19 per cent is fine. To do less than half of the bottom end of the bare minimum that is needed to keep global warming to two degrees is an absolute outrage. It is an insult to future generations in this country and it is an insult to the current generations living in our Pacific island neighbour countries, who are already facing saltwater incursion into their food-producing land and inundations such that their countries might not exist in a few short years.

Yet the current government, despite the change of leadership, have not changed a thing. In fact, they signed a deal with the National Party saying that they would not change former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's climate targets—they would stick with those anti-science targets that will condemn this world to catastrophic global warming and which would see Australia shirk its international responsibility to do its fair share as one of the wealthiest nations on this planet and, of course, as the highest per capita emitter on the planet.

The current government like to champion the fact that these woeful pollution reduction targets, they say, would entail the biggest per capita reduction. That is true, but do you know what? Even after implementing those targets, Australia would still be the highest per capita polluter on the planet. We are so far ahead of the rest of the world that even after implementing the woeful targets of the Abbott, now Turnbull, government we will still be the world's worst polluter on a per capita basis. That is absolutely shameful. For the government to continue to not even engage on that fact shows their absolute disregard for science. It shows that they continue to be simply a mouthpiece for the coal and fossil fuel sectors, to their eternal shame and to the embarrassment of most Australians, who understand that we need action on global warming not just to safeguard amazing places, like the Great Barrier Reef or the Wet Tropics or Tasmania's magnificent forests or our iconic species, not just for those clear environmental benefits but for our very safety and way of life. I am from Queensland, where we have seen some really horrific extreme weather events in the last few years. We will see more of those, the science predicts, if we continue to pump out the greenhouse gas pollution that our coal industry is exporting to the rest of the world and that, sadly, we are still using way too much domestically.

Is that really the sort of future that you want to condemn us to? If you do not care about the environment, which clearly you do not, if you are not so worried about people's property and their emotional resilience being damaged, have a look at the economic prosperity that we are missing out on by refusing to get on board that transition to clean energy. Have a look at the fact that the global coal price is now in structural decline. There are many economists lining up to say that it is not just a dip it is structural decline. It is not coming back. Look instead at the embrace that other nations are giving to clean energy production, which we could be a part of. This could actually be an economic boon, for us, here in Australia. This is not news. We should not have to point this out at every opportunity. It is patently obvious global economics. The fact that this government still has its head in the sand on the science and on the economics simply shows that it is utterly morally bereft and utterly hostage to the fossil fuel sector.

There was some wonderful news just the other day that the Obama administration in the US has rejected one of the key fossil fuel projects, the Keystone Pipeline, which has long been proposed to open up Canada's tar sands. President Obama rejected it on the basis of its climate impacts. This is the first time that we have seen a project rejected in a developed nation on the basis of its global warming impacts. I hope that it is the start of a trend, because in Australia we have so many of these dangerous, extreme, unnecessary and unfinanceable projects on our books. We have the Galilee Basin in Queensland, which is one of the world's largest coal basins. If it were opened up and all that coal were exported and burnt, should the economy not be as it is, it would be the seventh largest contributor to global emissions. If it were a country, it would be the seventh largest polluter. It is an enormous coal basin that cannot be opened up or we face the end of the Great Barrier Reef and our existence as we know it.

We have massive plans for fracking. In Queensland alone there are up to 40,000 coal seam gas and unconventional gas wells that various multinationals and some domestic companies, with the full support of this government and, I might add, the opposition, want to sink on our best food-producing land. We have already seen the huge social toll that that industry is having on our regional communities. The shocking passing of Mr George Bender, just a few weeks ago, has really given voice to the desperation that those communities are feeling because nobody is listening to them. We visit and we hear them, but nobody in government is doing anything to protect their land, their livelihood, their water supply and the world's climate. I hope that we can change course in time.

There are some good news stories. I have mentioned that the Keystone Pipeline was rejected. We have a wonderful congregation and coalition of ordinary Australians who are uniting and calling for action on this threat of global warming and who can see that the science says, 'For heaven's sake, this is beyond question; let's get on with it.' Let's get that prosperity from a clean energy economy, which we know Australia is so well placed to take advantage of, which is job rich and which could be an enormous boon for us and would see us catch up to the rest of the world. We absolutely need that.

Part of that, of course, is having strong targets and strong policy platforms. We Greens, at our national conference at the weekend, have just announced that we do not want to see the world stabilise at below two degrees. We want to see the world aim to stabilise global warming at no more than 1½ degrees because, sadly, in the briefings that I have had with quite a number of climate scientists in recent weeks, even a 1½ degree increase in global temperature means the demise of 90 per cent of the world's coral reefs. In Queensland the Great Barrier Reef is hugely central to our economy. It brings in $6 billion every year and employs more than 60,000 people. They are local jobs, jobs in those regional communities. They could be long-term jobs that bring in prosperity for us, for evermore, if we look after the reef.

We know that climate change is the biggest change to the reef, and yet we see these plans for pathetic targets that ignore the science. Every single coal mine or coal-seam gas application that passes the environment minister's desk, no matter which big party it is from, gets ticked off. We saw the attacks on the renewable energy target. We saw the carbon price repealed. We saw the former Prime Minister make an absolute buffoon of himself any time he tried to talk about climate. The current Prime Minister has tried to change the rhetoric but there has been no change in substance. Prime Minister Turnbull needs to increase our targets in the lead-up to the Paris conference. He needs to seriously commit to that global climate finance move. He needs to get out of the way of the reform of global fossil fuel subsidies. He needs to stop embarrassing Australians and prove that we can be the clean-energy economy of the future. (Time expired)