Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is a matter of public importance to many in the Australian community but particularly those in my own state of Queensland. It is time to put the community first, ahead of the interests of the coal corporations. Everybody knows that the coal corporations, many of them offshore entities and their front organisations, have been donating millions of dollars to the two parties of the establishment for many years now. It is clear that this perversion of the public policy process is holding back our communities from the opportunity to effectively, fairly and appropriately transition to an economic future that works for our entire nation, and particularly for regional communities.

Just recently, the Boom andbust report in 2018, commissioned by CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, tracks the use of power plants globally. It shows that coal-fired power demand continues to decline, primarily due to government regulations and policy changes in China and declining financial and policy support in India—the two most populous nations on the planet, of course. Yet, in this place, we see the coalition government, certainly with the support of the Labor Party in terms of the government in Queensland, continue to back the Adani Carmichael mine and continue to back the potential opening up and expansion of a whole new, massive thermal coal deposit in the Galilee Basin. Until we can get a clear policy commitment that recognises the need to phase out existing thermal coalmining and coal-fired power stations and a commitment to not open up any new thermal coalmines, we will continue to have regional communities being torn in different directions and will continue to have the threat of public resources being put towards stranded assets at great public cost that will not deliver a viable economic future for our communities and will certainly not deliver the energy prices, the energy certainty and the energy policies that all of our community needs.

The Greens, of course, have campaigned for many years with significant success at getting our country and countries around the world to transition to renewable energy. Despite the massive and incredibly dishonest propaganda campaign from some in the corporate media who are backing the coal lobby and the fossil fuel lobby, it is clear that this transition to renewable energy has assisted in keeping prices down from where they would otherwise have been. If it hadn't been for the extraordinary vandalism of this current government in destroying the carbon price signal that was put in place by the previous Labor government with the strong support and encouragement of the Greens, we would have far lower energy prices now, with much lower carbon emissions as well. We would be further down the track of transitioning to an alternative future that provides stable, secure, sustainable jobs for people in our regional communities.

Indeed, the parts of the climate package that the Greens were successful in having adopted under the previous government—particularly the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA, with its support and assistance for new renewable energy projects—have delivered thousands and thousands of ongoing jobs as well as construction jobs. They have delivered an expansion in reliable energy. With further investment in this area, we can effectively transition, but not until we can get a clear recognition of the need to get that basic commitment to not opening up new coalmines and instead to properly investing in industries and employment in regional communities. Those industries and opportunities are there already. Some of the existing jobs, particularly in areas like tourism, are put at risk by the continual attempt to turn a blind eye to the major environmental impacts that come from not winding back our fossil fuel emissions as quickly as possible. We're seeing this continually, in all parts of the country, and certainly in Queensland—for example, in Northern Queensland, where people have to pay massively higher insurance premiums because of the reality of more severe weather events coming down the track. We need to transition, and the sooner we do it the better it will be for the Australian people. (Time expired)