Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I will withdraw the comment. I still ask: what is the arrangement for the special mates rates deal that the government is giving this foreign company to not just exploit the land on which they want to run their project but put the entire challenge of our dealing with climate change at risk? One of the biggest problems with this project is that Australia will never be able to reach its weak targets, if the proposed amount of coal is dug out of the ground and burnt. If this project were to go ahead, we might as well say goodbye to climate action.

Why on earth does this company need a billion-dollar leg-up from the Australian taxpayer, if it is a good project anyway? It is because no-one else will bankroll them. The executives at Adani are desperate to get the final approvals done by the federal government. Of course, the Queensland state Labor government have done their bit to help this company every step of the way, and now we have, rushing through this parliament, the desperation of this company. Every time the minister stands up he says nothing about Australians; it is all about the big overseas company Adani. It is as if he is more the minister for Adani than he is the minister for Queenslanders or, indeed, Australians at large.

You have to question what on earth is really going on, because this government and particular ministers are so obsessed in relation to this project and with helping out this dodgy, corrupt company, who are going to burn our planet to a crisp if they are able to get this amount of coal out of the ground. We know that the coalition and, in particular, the National Party are absolutely in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. They do not give two hoots about tackling climate change. They do not really give a damn about the limited amount of jobs that this company is going to create. We know that it is not as many as they claim, because in court they were found to have been lying.

That is not what they are obsessed about, because it does not make any sense. It is, of course, that this government and members of the government are absolutely in the pocket of the big fossil fuel corporations. These big fossil fuel companies, whether it be Adani, BP or Chevron, think they run this place. They think that they have every right to get bills voted on when they want to get their projects ticked off in their time frame—and they are happy to take the government handouts and leg-ups whenever they can as well. Tax rorts, handouts, cheap loans, mates rates—it goes on and on. The fossil fuel companies, those big multinational corporations, love to think they run this place. When are we going to start talking about the people's rights and land rights, not mining rights? When are we going to have that conversation in this place?

While I am at it, when we talk about those in the pocket of Adani, those doing everything they can to hand out a billion-dollar mates rates loan to this big company at the expense of funding schools or medical facilities in Queensland, you have to wonder what is going on inside the Labor Party as well. They are talking out of both sides of their mouth on this issue, and they absolutely know it. You have the Queensland government selling out their own people, and you have the federal Labor Party not knowing what to do. They are absolutely split on this issue. When is the Labor Party going to start standing up for proper action on climate change and staring down these climate criminals in these multinational companies? When are they going to have the guts to do that? Even just earlier today, we saw the Labor Party in this place not being able to sign off on a decent report about the risk of BP drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight. We had a South Australian senator from the Labor Party cross the floor and sign off on a report with the Liberals to protect the interests of Chevron. You might wonder why on earth the Labor Party would get themselves into such a mess that you have one senator saying that Chevron and BP should have the right to drill for oil and the others—