Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Future Drought Fund Bill 2019 and related bill. I'll begin by making this point: if you don't have a plan for dealing with the climate crisis, you don't have plan for dealing with drought. That should be self-evident. The bottom line is that if you're not serious about tackling the breakdown of our climate, then anything you say about your concern about drought is meaningless.

We've got to choose between, our farmers who provide three per cent of GDP or $60 billion, and thermal coal exports, which are on track to be 1 per cent of GP or about $19 billion, because we can't have both. The single biggest cause of our climate breaking down and plunging our prime food-producing lands into severe, prolonged drought is coal, and we are the world's biggest exporter of coal. So, as long as our two major parties have no plan for coal, they have no plan for drought and for protecting our farmers and the land that sustains them and, in turn, all of us.

My message to those on the government benches is that irreparable damage to our food-producing lands is closer than they think. Farmers, right now, are on the frontline and are the first industry being hit by climate damage. They are feeling it each and every day. There's more heat-trapping pollution going up into our atmosphere right now than at any other time in human history. That should scare the living daylights out of people. It should scare the living daylights out of that mob over there, and it should prompt strong action.

Just think about what the Bureau of Meteorology said. The bureau has now said that this is the most severe drought in the Murray-Darling Basin in 120 years of records. Tomorrow, Paris is on track to experience record-breaking temperatures of 42 degrees, when their side of the world turns to face the sun—42 degrees—unprecedented in the city of love! In Canada 18 climate records have broken this month. The arctic is 4½ degrees warmer than usual.

Drought is threatening major cities in India like Chennai. India's people and their livestock are on the brink. In Mozambique, months of rain fell in a few short hours, creating a weather-related disaster in the Southern Hemisphere: 1.8 million people affected and $73 million of damage to buildings, infrastructure and agriculture. Do you know what the World Meteorological Organization said that this was? They said that it was a wake-up call to the world. So this bill and the government's refusal to address, let alone acknowledge, what is driving this drought show that they are incapable of responding to a challenge—an extensional challenge—that confronts each and every one of us, especially our farmers, who are struggling right now.

This drought and the natural disasters I've just talked about don't reflect the impacts of the record-high pollution pumping into our atmosphere and oceans we're experiencing right now. We know there's a lag. We know that things are on track to get worse. I've talked about the situation globally. Here in Australia, our emissions have never been higher. Let me say that again: Australia's pollution has never been higher. We've made gains from transitioning away from coal to renewables, but those gains are being wiped out by our gas export industry. As a result of that industry, we're seeing more pollution being pumped into the atmosphere than ever before.

As my colleague Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said, we know the reasons for that. We know that those massive donations—the $2.7 million donated to the National and Liberal parties and the $2 million donated to the Labor Party over the past five years—mean that Australia is stuck with a shocking framework for dealing with this crisis. It means that polluters can pollute for free, while all of us need to pay for their mess. We see a cartel holding Australian households and businesses to ransom with record high prices or, indeed, threatening to export instead. We've got these profitable industries that don't pay a cent in royalties. They get their gas for free. They've amassed $324 billion in tax credits, meaning they won't have to pay a cent in tax for a decade. They are extracting our resources, they are doing it for free and they are asking each and every one of us to clean up the mess. As an added bonus for their donations, they've got gas lobbyists and communications strategists handing the minister intellectually bankrupt talking points. Somehow we are being told that burning more coal and gas is going to reduce our emissions and clean up the atmosphere. What nonsense. What utter garbage. That's why my colleague Senator Rice will be moving a second reading amendment to say that the gas industry should pay for the damage that they're doing to our farmers.

The coal and gas industry are getting away with robbery against the Australian people. They are aided and abetted by the Australian government, and it is damaging our farmers. It is leading to an epidemic of mental ill health. It is causing distress. Families are being torn apart. It is the actions of this government, in refusing to deal with dangerous climate change, that are responsible for driving the crisis that people are experiencing right across regional Australia. When the Nationals and the Liberal Party stop taking those donations from the coal, oil and gas industry, then we'll know that they are serious about dealing with drought and that they are indeed on the side of farmers. When the Labor Party stop celebrating coal and start to refuse donations from the coal industry, then we'll know that they are serious about tackling the breakdown of our climate and about helping our farmers. Until then, we know that this is simply rhetoric and hot air and that they are pouring fuel on this bushfire and using this bill as a water pistol to try and put it out.

Of course, we know why the bill has been designed in the way that it has. This is about creating a slush fund for the National Party to hand out millions of dollars to their corporate irrigator mates. You only need to look at what happens when you put the National Party in charge of water. Look no further than their management of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Do you remember that recording where the member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, was telling his mates in Shepparton that he was going to look after them and prevent water from going into the environment? He doesn't care about the health of the Murray-Darling Basin. He cares about lining the pockets of his irrigator mates. Remember the awarding of infrastructure grants for things that companies were going to do anyway, with no follow-up on how that money was spent, and that cowboy attitude that led to fraud charges against the cotton-growing empire of Norman Farming, which has family connections to the current water minister? Remember the Nationals turning a blind eye to earthworks on farms in the northern basin to harvest floodwaters—water that should have been flowing down to the lower basin communities? Remember the biggest single payment for new infrastructure given to Angus Taylor's associated companies, with no requirement to surrender ongoing rights to water? The market value of what was sold for $80 million is pretty close to zero. But don't take my word for it. Take the words of the South Australian royal commissioner, Bret Walker SC, who made it very clear that Commonwealth officials had committed gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful actions in drawing up the multibillion-dollar deal to save Australia's largest river system. Let's be clear about this. The Nationals are in charge of water, and there is a royal commission in South Australia highlighting gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful activity. That's what's in store here.

We have concerns, serious concerns, about what this drought fund will do. Of course, in specific circumstances there is a strong case to give assistance to farmers by funding appropriate projects, but this bill doesn't do that. It hands extraordinary power to the minister, without the appropriate checks and balances. That's why we'll be amending this legislation, and we call on all sides—the Labor Party and, indeed, the crossbench—to support what will be sensible amendments and to make sure that where assistance is given it is not money that is taken out of the funding of infrastructure, that where assistance is given it is given on the basis of sound scientific advice and not at the whim or behest of an irrigator. We need to ensure that, where we are funding projects, we are not funding projects that will fuel the increased use of fossil fuels, leaving us entrenched further in a cycle of climate change and drought.

People across the land are struggling. They are struggling because they are facing one of the worst droughts in this nation's history. Until we have a plan to deal with the cause of drought and the breakdown of our climate, we don't have a plan to deal with drought. Unless we have a plan to transition away from coal to renewable energy, away from increasing gas use to renewable energy, we will be making drought worse, because we will be fuelling climate pollution and, of course, the destruction of so many agricultural communities. Where assistance is given to farming communities it needs to be on the basis of science, not on the basis of a fund designed to assist the National Party to look after their corporate backers.