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

Earlier this week the parliament finally took a stand on Adani. The President took it into his own hands to make a ruling about Adani. Do you think it was about Adani's mine? No, it was about me wearing, 'Stop Adani' earrings. It is tragic that this parliament decided not to stop Adani's mine, but to stop Adani's earrings. That is unfortunately the quality of the debate that we see about climate science in this chamber. No doubt the contribution to follow mine will have that same tenor of an absolute 'bozone' layer between facts and science and those on the opposite side of the chamber.

It was interesting that it was raised that Adani have got 180 conditions, and therefore it's all going to be fine, because they've got these conditions written down. They have just been investigated by the federal environment department for breaching those conditions. They are being prosecuted by the Queensland government for breaching state conditions. They have a litany of overseas examples where they have breached overseas environmental conditions. They are now being sued, as is the federal environment department, for not following the right process in granting environmental approvals. So the whole process stinks. The company's track record stinks. The climate disaster that it would create if it were ever to go ahead stinks. The fact that it's being done because the company and other coal and resource companies make donations to both sides of politics stinks worst of all.

That's why I'm proud that today I introduced a bill that would stop Adani, and it would stop the eight other mega coalmines that are proposed for the Galilee Basin. We had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change release their report just last month, begging humanity to stay within 1½ degrees of temperature rise. We've already seen the impacts of the extreme weather being turbocharged by climate change. If we keep pumping more coal into the system, if we open up the first coal basin in 50 years, the other half of the reef will die and we will see more of those extreme weather events that make people suffer.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

I would hope that Senator Macdonald doesn't find amusing the fact that much of Queensland is still on fire from the extreme heatwaves and the catastrophic fire rating that we have never before seen. But he's still laughing. Anyway, be that on his own head.

I'm very proud to have introduced that bill. I won't expect support from the other side and, frankly, I won't expect support from Labor, either, because their latest contribution on the Adani coalmine has been to say that, because it will be burnt overseas, it's somehow not Australia's problem. We don't share the same atmosphere, do we? Australia has got its own atmosphere that's not connected to the rest of the planet, so it's totally fine to burn the coal from Adani's coalmine because it is not on Australia's books, so it's not our problem. Well, please, find a better excuse.

So they did find a better excuse. The next one was that there would be a sovereign risk to Australia if the mine weren't to proceed. Now, that sounds like a very fancy sort of phrase, but it means very little. It means investor uncertainty. I hope that Adani does have investor uncertainty. In fact, they've pretty much had that because no-one will invest in their project. They've had to self-fund because no-one else can see this as a decent investment. They know the science is real, they know the Indigenous communities don't want this and they know there are better options to keep the lights on, which Senator Macdonald might like to look into. So this sovereign risk argument is the latest in a very long line of pathetically weak excuses from the so-called opposition as to why they won't get off the fence and simply say that this coal should stay in the ground and why they won't listen to the majority of Queenslanders and Australians who can see that clean energy is the way forward. It's good for our economy, it's good for our communities, it's good for our health and it's good for the health of our planet. I wonder what excuse we'll see next week.

Do you know what it all boils down to? It boils down to the $3.4 million that both sides of politics have received from resource companies in the last four years. That's the thing that stinks most of all. We have the science that is absolutely clear. We are already seeing the effects of the climate crisis that we are driving, and you folk want to continue it because you're taking the money from the coal companies. Shame on you. It's about time that you gave back the dirty money, you started listening to the science and you didn't protest that somehow having 180 conditions—some of which have already been breached—is going to make everything okay or that Australia has got its own atmosphere, so it's all going to be okay. Please do better. We are actually in charge of the future of the planet's atmosphere here, and if you take the right decision we all might have a liveable future.