Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As many of my colleagues in the Australian Greens have made clear, we have a number of extremely serious concerns relating to this legislation. Again, as many of my colleagues have made clear, we have significant concerns around the haste with which this bill has been introduced into this parliament. It has been rushed through the House of Representatives. It is now being presented in an equally rushed way to the Senate.

Part of our concerns about that indecent haste is the lack of genuine consultation that has been able to be undertaken with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples regarding this bill. It is worth pointing out that normally when there are policy considerations that relate to Australia's first peoples those considerations are done in a calm way and they are done in a very considered way. That is as it should be, because we need to do more of getting out and listening to Australia's first people when we make policy that has the potential to impact on them. But this piece of legislation has been done in indecent haste. That is because the government's motivation for this legislation is not the best interests of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The government's motivation is to look after the Adani company, to try to get up the Adani Carmichael coal mine—the climate-destroying megamine that appears so beloved of the Liberals and, for that matter, so beloved of the Australian Labor Party.

Given the complexity of native title arrangements and the very high level of significance of the amendments contained in this legislation we need more time not less to think about this, more time not less to listen to the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and more time not less to think about the positions that we will take on this legislation. That is not what the government is doing. They are acting in indecent haste. In doing so they are, effectively, admitting this is not about fixing up native title but about trying to stampede, through this place, a piece of legislation that is designed to get up a coal mine proposed by the Adani Group of companies for the Carmichael basin. Let us not make any mistake about the motivations here. The motivations of this government stick out like a sore thumb. They are acting in indecent haste and, in doing so, are trying to bring in amendments that will trample the rights of some Aboriginal people in Australia. Those concerns have been placed on the record and I will go to them later in my speech. They are doing it because they are trying to look after big coal in this country.

Why would major parties in this place try to look after big coal? There are a few reasons they would look after big coal. It is interesting to watch the performance of Senator Canavan who seems to think it his job to shill for big coal, because that is what he has spent most of his time doing in the last couple of months: shilling for big coal, spruiking for big coal, talking down banks, like Westpac, who have said they are not going to fund the Adani coal mine, personally insulting one of the big Australian banks because they happen to take a position that Minister Canavan did not agree. That is all part of shilling for big coal, Canavan style, and we have seen it again and again.

Why would he do that? It is because of $3.7 million donated in the last three years by big polluters—that is, big coal and big gas—to both sides of politics in this place. There is the Liberal Party and the National Party on one side, and the ALP—another Liberal Party, in effect—on the other; those initials stand for, in this context, the other side of parliament. They are both in here, regularly, doing the business at the bidding of our big fossil fuel polluters. They get the donations in, the donations that allow them to get elected into this place. Then they deliver on the policy outcomes, like their decisions on the Adani mine, their decisions on native title and their bipartisan, ongoing support for the $24 billion that was contained in the most recent budget in direct taxpayer subsidies for the fossil fuel sector. Then, when they leave this place, they know there is a good chance they will get offered a job, because there is a revolving door between the floor of the Senate and the corporate boardrooms of the big polluters in this country—and it is a revolving door that needs to be slammed closed. It is why we need cooling-off periods once someone has sat in this place so that they cannot go straight from the floor of the Senate into the corporate boardrooms or into the spin departments of Australia's big corporate polluters. It is why we need more effective control on lobbyists. It is why we need a Commonwealth anticorruption authority—because of those donations and those positions that are taken on the floor of this place, with the revolving door back the other way, and from the floor of the Senate into the big corporates, whether it be the gambling corporates, the banking corporates, the coal corporates or the gas corporates. We have seen it all, time after time. Those donations and that delivery of public policy, with the revolving door from the floor of the Senate back into Australia's big corporations, are corrupting our democracy and they mean that the votes and the positions that we collectively take in this Senate are inappropriately influenced by big corporations.

The Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Bill 2017 is a case in point. This has nothing to do with fixing up native title and everything to do with getting up a giant, new, mega-polluting coalmine in this country that will contribute massively to the world's emissions profile and, therefore, contribute massively to dangerous climate change, which, as we know, is going to adversely impact on the world's poorest and most vulnerable people to the greatest extent and, as we also know, is over time going to kill the Great Barrier Reef. That is the choice facing us in Australia and decision-makers in Australia today. You can have one or the other of the Adani mine or the Great Barrier Reef, but you cannot them both. That beautiful natural icon, that treasure that people come from around the world to see and experience, is at risk of dying. Parts of it are already dead. Other parts may or may not recover and, if they do, it will only be till the next bleaching event occurs. It is the Adani mine or the Barrier Reef. You cannot have them both. This legislation is about the Adani mine. The Adani mine has bipartisan support from the Labor and Liberal parties and that bipartisan support is going to mean free coal for Adani through the royalty holiday granted by the Queensland Labor government. It is going to mean free water for Adani, again delivered by the Queensland government, and free money for Adani, delivered through Minister Canavan's northern Australia infrastructure fund.

It is an absolute crock. Once again, we are in a situation where we are being asked to come in here and ride roughshod over the wishes of the Wangan and Jagalingou people, who have been very clear that they do not support this legislation or the Adani mine. We are being asked to basically come in here and lay out the red carpet for a company that is in trouble in various places around the world because of its corporate behaviour. We know it is a company that destroys the environment and a company that does not seem to care or understand that coal is in structural decline. We have an Indian government that is transitioning rapidly into renewable energy, an Indian government that understands that, if you want to bring electricity to the countless Indian people who do not currently have access to electricity, the best way to do that is through small-scale, locally distributed, renewable energy projects like solar—and that is what they are doing right now. India is going to phase out the import of coal within three years. It is an announcement that has been made. How on earth the Labor and Liberal parties think that hitching their wagon to this giant, emitting, polluting, corrupting coalmine is good public policy has absolutely got me beat.

We know from the Wangan and Jagalingou people that they do not support this coalmine. I want to place on the record the views expressed only a week or so ago by a senior spokesman for the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Council, Mr Adrian Burragubba, who said:

Adani can put on whatever song and dance they like but the reality is that we have never consented to Adani's mine being constructed on our land.

It is worth repeating: they have never consented to Adani's mine being constructed on their land. Look at the statements that have been made. They go into detail about the lengths that Adani have gone to to try to make it appear that there are Aboriginal people in that area who support their mine. It absolutely beggars belief.

Once again we are in this situation where we have the bipartisan support of the Liberal and National parties on one side and the Labor Party on the other side for this coalmine that is so divorced from the real world. It is so divorced from the commercial realities of coal. It is so divorced from the wishes of the traditional peoples of that area. It is so divorced from the realities of global warming. You have to ask yourself: how could these people who purport to be intelligent, who purport to think their way through issues, take positions that are so divorced from reality? Follow the money. Follow the millions of dollars in donations that flow from big coal, big gas, big banks, big gaming into this place, into the coffers of the ALP on one hand and of the Liberals and Nationals on the other hand. If you want to understand how policymaking in this place has become so divorced from the real world, follow the money. Follow the money and follow the career trajectories, because it is by following the money and by following the career trajectories that you will understand—and I hope the Australian people can understand—exactly what is going on here. It is not pretty.

Climate change is a threat to everything that we hold dear as a country and as a community. Our national security is threatened by climate change. Our education system will be threatened by climate change. Our health system, our law and order, our wellbeing, our property—they are all going to be threatened by climate change. All of those things that we hear so much about from the Liberal and National parties and the ALP in this place are under threat from climate change. This mine, the Adani mine, should it ever go ahead, will contribute massively to global warming.

I have a warning and a message for people in here who are going to continue to back-in the Adani mine. My warning and my message is this: this mine is not going to be built. What will stop this mine being built is the Australian people, because, when governments and political parties lose touch with reality to such a degree that they are prepared to ignore commercial markets, that they are prepared to ignore global warming, that they are prepared to ignore the views of traditional owners—when we get to that place, people get angry. And we are at this place right now in regard to the Adani mine, and people are getting angry—and understandably so.

Ultimately, it will be people that stop this mine. I have seen it time after time in my home state of Tasmania. When projects have been proposed that make people angry, that make people think that their political representatives are not listening to them, people will take action into their own hands. They will participate in peaceful blockades, peaceful protests and peaceful civil disobedience. I have participated with them in the past in Tasmania, and I will participate with them again should Adani be silly enough to start trying to build the railway or start trying to construct this mega-emitting coalmine. People will flock from around this country to stop this project, because it is a decision point for this country.

It is a decision point that will allow us to make a determination about whether we are going to change the way we are going to do business in this country to reflect the harsh realities that we are facing—most importantly, from climate change—or whether we are going to continue on the business-as-usual path that ultimately will lead us and, tragically, most of the rest of the world into disaster. And it will not just be disaster for people; it will be disaster for things like the Great Barrier Reef, and for a range of other species and ecosystems on this plant. This beautiful, resilient, but in the short-term very fragile, planet ultimately supports all of our lives, all of our hopes, all of our aspirations, our families, our jobs, our health, our education and all of the things that we spend so much time in this place talking about.

So we do have those concerns about this legislation. I make no apology for the majority of my contribution here today focusing on coal and focusing on global warming. While this legislation is masquerading as a piece of legislation designed—as the government would have us believe—to fix up native title, that is not what it is for. The indecent haste with which this government has introduced and is trying to pass this legislation is an effective admission that it is not at all about native title; it is about— (Time expired)