Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The problem of drought is not going to go away. It's no longer a rare or unpredictable occurrence, like tropical cyclones or tornados. It's a harsh ongoing way of life for many Australian farmers, and we need to deal with it. But we simply cannot ignore the elephant in the room. We cannot deal with the problem of drought without dealing with our climate crisis. If we ignore climate change and only throw money at drought we might as well be putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.

The No. 1 thing that we need to do to support farmers and communities that are struggling with drought is to tackle our climate crisis; otherwise, droughts are going to keep on getting worse and worse and communities will suffer more and more as our climate gets hotter and dryer. You only need to look at the news just in the last week. We've heard that the Murray Darling Basin has had half its normal rainfall this year and the Murray Darling is experiencing the worst drought on record. Across Australia, the first half of this year was the second warmest on record and we've had the second driest conditions in the 120 years that we've been keeping records. There's even evidence that Australia hasn't been as dry as it is right now for two to three million years. We are still on track for four degrees of warming. If that happens, the climate of our wheat-growing areas will become like the climate of the central deserts—and no drought fund can deal with that. That's what we're on track for by 2070, when these kids that are in the gallery today will only be as old as most of us in here are now. You cannot be bequeathing them that type of future.

Australia's domestic carbon pollution is the highest per person of any country in the world. When you add in the pollution that comes from our exports of coal, gas and oil, we're responsible for one tonne out of every 25 tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere that's being released across the globe, despite being less than half a per cent of the world's population. In the carbon pollution stakes, Australia is a massive player. We really do punch above our weight, and we need to equally pay a big role in tackling our climate crisis.

The importance of doing this is underlined by the fact that, sadly, we know that we are already in this climate crisis. Hotter and dryer conditions are already baked in. We're dealing with the consequent drought crisis that we have to be tackling, which shows that we must be investing in projects that support farmers in building resilience to face this climate crisis, that build agricultural systems, that work to regenerate our land and our soils, and that reduce rather than increase the water that's being taken from our rivers, our streams and our groundwater. What this means is not building big new dams to prop up unsustainable agribusiness. It means not delivering for the corporate vested interests that are sucking our rivers dry rather than delivering for struggling farmers who really need our help.

This bill, as it currently stands, is not what Australia needs. It's been rammed through. It's been used as a political football. But I'm not going to dwell on this, because the issue of drought is too important for us to be dwelling on the politics of how this is being misused at the moment. So I'm going to focus on what needs to happen to improve this bill and on the amendments that the Greens are going to move to this bill, which will make it a bill that can be supported and that will deliver for the struggling farmers of Australia. The problems with this bill start with the deep lack of accountability of the drought minister and the fact that the whole bill and the whole fund that is being invested in is leaving the door open to money actually being invested in fossil fuels, the sector that contributes to drought. There are huge changes that are needed.

There are four issues that the Greens seek to amend, and we look forward to the amendments being supported across this parliament. I'm particularly looking forward to the support of the Labor Party, because many of the issues are those that Senator Gallagher just outlined about the Labor Party's concerns about the bill. Firstly, we must significantly increase the parliamentary oversight of the drought minister. This bill gives far too much leeway to the minister and his National Party mates to pick and choose which projects get funded. Secondly, we must ensure the integrity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and of our national water laws. Thirdly, we have to make sure that this bill doesn't rip $3.9 billion out of the Building Australia Fund. Our cities and regions are already experiencing chronic underinvestment in transport infrastructure. Instead, the Greens are proposing that the moneys for this fund should come from the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks that we give to the fossil fuel industry every year. They are the ones who should be paying to clean up their own mess. Finally, it needs to be crystal clear that the investment vehicle for this fund must not invest in fossil fuels. It would be the peak of cynicism to have a drought fund that's designed to help our regions adapt to the impacts of climate change simultaneously investing in the very industries that are causing that climate crisis.

Cathy McGowan's amendments from the last parliament did improve this bill and the transparency and accountability of the remit of the minister, but they don't go far enough. As the bill currently sits, we've got a Future Drought Fund Consultative Committee which must provide advice on the Drought Resilience Funding Plan, and the minister must have regard to that advice. But, when it comes to advice on the design of grants or payments for individual projects, there is nothing. There's no need whatsoever for the minister to listen to the committee. The minister must ask for advice from the committee, but there's no requirement for the minister actually to listen to that advice. They can pick and choose whatever projects they like, as long as it can be argued that overall they comply with that drought resistance plan. So our first suite of amendments is building on and strengthening it to ensure that the minister actually must have regard to the advice of the committee on whether each individual grant or arrangement complies with the plan, as it would provide one further check on the minister's discretion.

Let's go to the consultative committee. We're setting up a consultative committee, but who do you think gets to pick the members of the consultative committee? Why, it's the minister. There needs to at least be some degree of proper community oversight over this committee. That's why the Greens would require, first of all, a public call for nominations to the committee, inviting the public to nominate people and then requiring the minister to take notice of the submissions that they receive. Then we would require the minister to publish written notice of their intent to nominate a member of that committee. There should be a submission period in relation to that nomination, and the final decision by the minister must have regard to those submissions.

When you look at other bodies that distribute money on this sort of scale, such as the Regional Investment Corporation, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, it's not the minister for energy or the minister for industry running around selecting individual projects to fund. By leaving these decisions directly in the hands of the minister, there is a much higher threshold of accountability that's required. That's why we think that each arrangement or grant should be disallowable by the parliament. We simply cannot afford to have a drought minister pork-barrelling projects across the country with such minimal oversight. Drought mitigation and resilience is too serious an issue for that. We're not saying that parliament should be disallowing hundreds of projects, but it does mean that in any egregious breach of good governance or in cases of clear corruption, which we have seen plenty of evidence of, there need to be safeguards in the public interest.

Our second suite of amendments relates to preventing the Future Drought Fund from ripping billions of dollars out of our infrastructure budget. Yes, Minister Littleproud was correct in saying that the Building Australia Fund hasn't been used to fund projects for half a decade; but that's entirely the fault of the government. The government have chosen to work around the Building Australia Fund because that money actually requires a degree of oversight by Infrastructure Australia of where the money goes, and they don't want that oversight—another example of the Nationals trying to work around good governance and good process to deliver money for their pet projects. But we don't even need to make this compromise. You don't need to raid the infrastructure budget to pay for this drought fund. There are billions and billions of dollars on the table ready to be taken from the very companies who are causing the climate crisis and the water crisis and the drought crisis, and that is the fossil fuel industry.

The Greens propose that we can raise $4.9 billion over the next two years merely by applying a flat 10 per cent royalty on projects that are subject to the petroleum resource rent tax. This would mean that multinational oil and gas companies like Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell would be funding drought resilience, not the taxpayer—and they should. It is the climate pollution spewing out of their operations that is causing and exacerbating drought. Right now the petroleum resource rent tax is the most rorted tax in the country. There are over $300 billion of tax credits ready to offset future payments, and they are growing at a higher rate than the bond rate. In its current form, the PRRT is absolutely useless. We are simply letting these giant oil and gas companies dig up and burn our resources for free. If you did fix the PRRT, this 10 per cent royalty would be offset against their liabilities under the PRRT and basically act as a floor. If they are making profits out of digging up our oil and gas, then 10 per cent of those profits should be taxed and go to pay for drought resilience. It's a policy that the Greens took to the election. But, even without changes to the way that the PRRT is calculated, this royalty would at least provide a baseline of revenue for the Commonwealth.

I will be moving amendments to keep the Building Australia Fund intact. And, yes, we understand the constitutional limitations of the Senate, so our initiative with regard to the PRRT is in the form of a second reading amendment. I foreshadow that I will move my second reading amendment that has been distributed in the chamber, calling on the government to properly tax those oil and gas super-majors to pay for the climate chaos that they are creating.

Our third suite of amendments relates to our grave concerns that this money is going to be used to build giant new dams up and down the Murray-Darling Basin—