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

So they have been bussing in people who do not genuinely represent the Wangan and Jagalingou mob. As a result, an ILUA has been signed that does not reflect the wishes of that mob. Is it any wonder that the government wants to preference the needs and wishes of a big mining company ahead of reaching a genuine consensus and a genuine free, prior and informed consent arrangement with our First Australians?

Our laws do not enshrine the requirement for free, prior and informed consent. Internationally we have that obligation, but there have been no steps whatsoever taken to put that into our domestic laws. This is a real blight that we should be attending to fix as a matter of urgency, but, no, that would of course make it more difficult for the big mining companies. So you will not see that out of this government, and you probably will not see it out of the opposition either.

It is pretty clear that this bill is a sop to Adani, and the relevant minister admitted as much earlier today. He really belled the cat in that Adani have leant on the government, they have leant on the state government and they have demanded certainty—the audacity of them demanding certainty when this is and always will be Indigenous land—and now the government is saying, 'Oh, you want us to jump? How far would you like us to jump?' and are ramming through these laws. We saw the Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, head off to India in the last few weeks and do a deal with the head of the Adani Group and assure him that it would all be settled, that it would be fine and that she would sort it out. They have rolled out the red carpet for this company. It is a shame that they have done no such thing when it comes to the First Australians in Queensland.

Of course, hot on the heels of the Queensland Premier was none other than the Prime Minister himself, who also went over to India in a big sop to Adani and its company group. He also said, 'We'll sort it out; don't you worry about that, mate. We will trash the native title rights and we will fix this for you so that you can build one of the largest coalmines in the world on Indigenous land. We don't care if the local mob don't support it. We've got some signatures on a bit of paper from the wrong people, but we don't care; we will use the law to abuse the process and make sure that your donations keep flowing to us and that you can rip out the guts from our land.'

It is really clear that the impacts of this mine would completely trash the significance and specialty of that land, both for non-Indigenous people and also, importantly, for the Wangan and Yagalingu people. They are deeply concerned about the impacts on groundwater and the impacts on their dreaming sites. They have taken me powerfully through some of the dreaming stories of that land, and it is moving and something that should be respected. Instead, this government is saying that it wants to simply roll out the red carpet even more for a big mining company and it does not give a damn about the rights of the Wangan and Yagalingu people, who are desperate to have their voices heard in the native title process and to have their rights respected. But, as we have seen, the native title process itself has been a construct that, from the word go, was a compromise to suit the white fella. And now we have some amendments which will make it even more convenient for the mining companies and even less of a genuine system to recognise the prior existing rights of Indigenous people. It is an absolute abomination, in my view.

Moving to the impacts of this bill: if this is passed—and we will fight it—it will retrospectively validate those ILUAs which a court has found to be dodgy, to be not properly signed, because not enough of the relevant traditional owners signed on to them to make them valid ILUAs. So the government want to retrospectively validate an agreement to facilitate a big mining company. Often they come in here and try to say that they are doyens of the law and that they do not like retrospectivity. There is a principle against retrospectivity in lawmaking, because it changes things after the fact. You are not meant to do it—in plain language—but this government do not care, because, again, Adani has said, 'Jump' and the government have said, 'How high?' So they want to retrospectively validate these dodgy ILUAs and subjugate the rights of the Wangan and Yagalingu people.

This mine is probably the best example of the worst and most appalling way that the big parties are working for the interests of big mining companies, and the big corporates generally, ahead of the interests of ordinary people. It is no surprise and it is no wonder that Australians think that our system is broken and that our economic system is rigged against everyday people. This is the same system that lets the greedy bankers rip off everyday people with the full protection of politicians—although we note with pleasure that the banking levy, a partial adoption of Greens policy, has been proposed in the budget. This is the same system that would let Adani take unlimited groundwater from our state, which is 90 per cent in drought. Nobody else gets free water, but this mega-multinational mining company is going to get free groundwater in a state that is 90 per cent in drought.

This is the same system that wants to give a billion dollars of public money to that very same company, as a concessional loan. It will cost the budget—and we have sought to establish that in estimates—tens of millions of dollars to give this concessional loan to a company led by a billionaire, who should not need the support. Adani has got a complex corporate web of companies. If it cannot even organise itself to fund its own project, why is the taxpayer being asked to put up their hand and provide public money for this project?

On that point, I want to pick Labor up for trying to walk both sides of the fence. They keep saying that if this project stacks up then it should get NAIF funding. Well, the whole point of the NAIF funding is that it can only fund projects that do not stack up commercially. So I am afraid that Labor's rhetoric is utterly inconsistent when it comes to its pathetically divided approach on this enormous mega-mine.

One wonders why the big mining companies, and Adani in particular, have such influence over both sides of politics and both levels of government, and one needs to look no further than the political donations that are made by the fossil fuel companies to both sides of politics. At last count it was $3.7 million over three years that the fossil fuel sector—that is, big coal and big gas—have given to the Liberals, to the Labor Party and to the National Party. That is $3.7 million to run their election campaigns, as they desperately try to cling to power. And then they buckle on implementing their principles once they get into power, but that is beside the point. These donations are incredibly generous, and it is very clear that they are having the impact of policies that are designed to benefit the big corporates and to sacrifice the environment and to ignore the interests of ordinary community members.

So that is why there is the powerful movement that has sprung up in opposition to this mine. It is a David and Goliath battle. You have got the big miners and the big corporates generally. You have got their big donations. You have got the well-connected lobbyists—the former politicians who now work for those very same mining companies, or their former staffers. Again, it is a revolving door when it comes to the fossil fuel sector; one minute they are in this place making decisions; the next, they are promised a cushy job and they are out working for the industry, and back and forth it goes. I have spoken at length in this chamber about that previously—about the absolutely sordid links between the fossil fuel sector and the parliament, and the fact that it is no wonder that we get poor decisions out of this place when they are so impossibly hocked to the industry.

So one would think that this is a David and Goliath battle that people-power might not win. But people-power will win this because ordinary Australians do not want to see Indigenous rights trashed. They do not want to see our Reef further cooked by turbocharging climate change, like this mega-mine would do. They do not want to see a billion dollars of taxpayers' money given to a multinational company that does not need the help—and when that money could be so desperately better spent in other areas, and when they have not even had a chance to have a say on how that money should be spent. Many people in the community whom I speak to in Queensland are horrified when they hear that this project might get a billion dollars of public money, because, they say, 'I was never asked whether that was what my community wanted. We want better schools. We want better hospitals. We want some renewable energy jobs. We do not want a billion dollars being given to this dog of a project that will not employ anywhere near as many people as they claim it will.' And the company has admitted that—it acknowledges that it is not going to be 10,000 jobs. It might be 1,464, but who knows? We will have to wait and see. Of course, they are all FIFO jobs.

And we have seen the impact of the mining boom-and-bust cycle. Look at Gladstone. That poor town is now thoroughly destitute after the boom. I remember going to Gladstone five years ago; you could not get a hotel room. And now, of course, there are an awful lot of empty properties, because that is what happens when you get a mining boom-and-bust cycle. It puts communities through the washing machine, and they end up worse off because rates of violence, and domestic violence in particular, skyrocket; the cost of living skyrockets; and then the miners up and leave town, and the community is left with nothing. They have just ridden roughshod over that community, and I do not want that to happen to other communities in Queensland.

We have also seen in Queensland the resurgence of black lung, which coalminers are now suffering. We thought that that disease, pneumoconiosis, as it is known, was stamped out decades ago. But it is back. So these are not the sorts of jobs that you would want anyone to be working in, because people are now dying from them. Why this government and the state government thinks that the only possible job that can be created in regional Queensland is a coal job just shows an absolute lack of imagination and an absolute lack of understanding that we are now in this century. We have other options. Clean energy can do the job technologically and, if we hurry up then we will not get further behind the world.

Again, it comes back to those donations. It must be that is why the big mining companies have so much sway over both sides of politics, and it is why that is all the jobs they can think of—jobs that are short term, that will not last, that are subject to that boom and bust cycle, that are killing its workers and, importantly, that are threatening the reef itself and the 70,000 jobs that rely on the reef remaining healthy.

I have been to the reef many a time, and it made a huge impact on me. It is an absolutely magnificent place. If anyone has not had the joy of experiencing it, I would encourage them to do so. But it is under threat. We have already seen it being slammed with the two worst coral-bleaching episodes in its ancient history, the worst ever in the last two years, two successive years. Never before has the reef suffered such bleaching and never before has it happened in back-to-back years.

The scientists are being crystal clear about this. They could not be clearer. Terry Hughes and others of his ilk have been pleading and begging with decision makers at all levels of government saying: 'We cannot have more coal in the system. It is a choice between new coal or the reef. The reef can't take it anymore.' It has been falling on deaf ears in this place. Indeed, when my colleague, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, asked a question in the last sitting which pointed to Terry Hughes' desperate despair at the future of this reef that he loves, and so many other people love, he was ridiculed and mocked and offered a hanky. Come on, this is the federal parliament of Australia. Surely we can do better than that. We are talking about the future of an organism that can be seen from space, that will outlive and outlast all of us unless this mob continues to trash it by handing free money to big mining companies to line their own pockets with profits and then trash the climate for the rest of us and for future generations to look after. That is why this bill is so important. It is not only about Indigenous rights and the future of where we want to take the economy; it is also about what we want to do to this planet.

I have mentioned before that the red carpet has been rolled out for this company, and I want to go through precisely what state Labor have done. They have given a water licence with unlimited and free groundwater for the Adani Carmichael coalmine. They have offered Adani a royalty holiday. So not only do this company have the privilege of a billion dollars of public money that they will probably be awarded under this government; they are not even going to have to pay for the privilege. And here is the catch: the Queensland government is not even telling us the details of this royalty holiday. They will not say how long it is going to be for and they will not admit how much money Queenslanders will forego because the government is giving this company a free ride. What an absolute joke!

They have also created a special loophole for Adani so that there are no appeals available to the community against the water licence. Again, nobody else gets that sort of special treatment. Nobody else says: 'The processes don't apply to you. You can have this free pass. We'll make sure the community can't exercise the rights that they would otherwise have. She'll be right, mate.' Queensland Labor and, of course, this government here at the federal level as well, have approved the mine at every stage and at every level. Queensland Labor have now actively lobbied for federal funding for this project after they went to our state election saying they would save the reef, and people desperately wanted them to; they wanted to believe that. They said they would not put a cent of public money into the project and it had to stand on its own two feet. They had also earlier said, through their own Treasury officials, that this was an unbankable project.

And so what a surprise when, now that they are in government, they are actively lobbying for that federal money, that taxpayer money, to be given to this project! Interestingly, they have a veto power—it is not really being spoken about much. The Queensland government can veto the $1 billion that NAF might approve and probably will approve and give to Adani—and we would be urging them to do so, to stand firm on what were clear election commitments that they made, that the community supported because the community loves the reef and wants to see it protected and not trashed for the sake of a few extra dollars in a billionaire's back pocket.

It is pretty clear the processes are being rigged with vested interests. I have talked about the enormous amounts of donations, and that is probably why they are greasing the palms of the process that is happening here. But I want to also remind federal Labor that they are not without power here. If Mr Bill Shorten—who, frankly, has been trying to walk two sides of the road on this one—simply picked a side and said today or tomorrow that he would review the environmental approvals for the Adani coalmine because of the information that has come to light since those approvals were handed out, because of the litany of examples of environmental destruction in various different countries across the world, then that would create enough pressure, I believe, for the company to abandon this project. They know they have got a terrible track record of environmental destruction. They have been taken to court in their home country at least once and have been convicted of destroying mangroves and misoperating a port. What is the reaction here in Australia? Queensland Labor puts them in charge of a port, gives them a 99-year lease and says, 'She'll be right.'

The Wangan and Jagalingou people are standing strong against this mine, and they are standing strong against having their rights complete subjugated by this bill, which would retrospectively validate an ILUA that does not reflect their wishes. We are standing with them. We are standing with the 70,000 people who want the reef protected and who want their jobs protected, and we are standing for positive job creation for regional Queensland that will last and will not trash the reef.