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

I rise to speak on the MPI. It looks like a Greens motion! We welcome that, and we welcome the strong language on renewables. As we've said, we want to work constructively with Labor on energy policy in the future. But this motion is just words. What does 'ending the power privatisation mess' mean in the real world? The Greens have, in our policy platform, a public energy retailer. We would see the states building and owning these crucial network interconnectors. What is Labor's policy to end this so-called privatisation mess? Everything's already been sold off, and much of it was under your administration. The difficulty of staying below 1½ degrees, which the science tells us we've only got 12 years to do, requires more than just words, and it requires a policy that does more than just subsidise renewables. We support that, but it's not enough on its own.

The Energy Market Operator—AEMO, as it's known—has said that business as usual would get us to 46 per cent renewables by 2030. Labor's policy is for 50 per cent by that same year. That's only a four per cent difference—an extra one gigawatt of new renewables over and above what would happen anyway in the next 10 years. That isn't transformative. It's not enough. Building just one gigawatt in a decade is not a solution to the climate breakdown. In South Australia, there's one chap building one gigawatt of solar already, and yet this is Labor's plan for the whole country over a decade.

Transformation is bringing the carbon price back. It's linking it to the EU market immediately. It's picking up where we left off with the world-leading climate laws and carrying on as though Tony Abbott never happened. In addition to strong support for renewables, an economy-wide carbon price is what we need to push out coal, to encourage farmers to sequester carbon and give them an additional income stream, to tax the fugitive emissions from gas and coal mining and to change the investment decisions of Australian industry. The Labor Party are sadly so traumatised by a scare campaign on carbon pricing that they can't even support a motion Senator Di Natale moved today that simply stated the facts about how successful that carbon price was and the benefits that carbon pricing brought to the economy. And, tragically, neither side of the chamber supported my motions yesterday and today about ruling out a new water-hungry, climate-destroying thermal coalmine in Queensland's Galilee Basin, right next to the Adani mega-mine, which both sides of politics support.

Climate change is affecting us now. This is not something to worry about for future generations. It is happening now. Queensland is on fire. There are more than 138 fires burning in my state right now. The fire commissioner has said:

We have never ever in this state been in this situation before. We've not had a catastrophic level before.

The Premier has said this has never been seen before. This is exactly what climate change is going to continue to do to weather events. More than 30 schools have been closed, which is kind of ironic. The Prime Minister yesterday was condemning kids for wanting to participate in the school walkout on Friday to beg governments to take action on climate change, and now these kids in Queensland don't have the chance to go to school because of climate-induced bushfires. I hope the Prime Minister can see that irony.

We also know that support for climate action is stronger in the community than it's been since 2008. The community want us to do something. They can see that we've lost half the reef's coral cover. They can see that people are suffering from the sorts of climate-induced weather events that are currently wreaking havoc in Queensland and, I might add, in Sydney, with the massive downpours. But all Labor are doing is salvaging the policy that the Liberals threw in the bin. The NEG was a policy that was designed to get through a Tony Abbott government. It would further entrench the market power of the big three energy companies and simply add to the so-called privatisation mess, which this motion apparently opposes.

I beg both sides of the chamber: please stop approving new coalmines. The science could not be clearer. Our planetary system cannot handle new coal being added to the system. We welcome the strong support for renewables by the Labor Party. It's not as strong as we think the science would tell us it should be and it's not as strong as the Greens will push for—that's exactly why you need us in this chamber—but we welcome your strong steps. But please stop backing new coal. The reef can't handle it and our communities can't handle the extreme weather events. My heart goes out to Queenslanders and the fantastic emergency service personnel coping with what will become the new normal. (Time expired)