Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I know you will listen to my contribution. I'll make it very clear that I have a second reading amendment exactly on this subject. This goes directly to how we should be funding any future spend on drought in our rural and regional communities in Australia.

The Greens put forward a simple proposition that polluters should pay and that big fossil fuel companies—big oil and gas companies—should pay. These are the same companies that want to chase profits, feed more greed and go offshore in the Great Australian Bight and open up new areas for oil and gas at a time we desperately need to transition to clean energy. These are the same companies that pay little tax in this country. It is a very, very good idea, which I absolutely think will pass the pub test in any rural and regional part of this country, that the big polluters should actually be paying for the droughts that they are helping to create. So it is directly relevant to the discussion here today.

If I can go back to the final hearing we had in Perth, we had there some of the biggest fossil fuel companies, some of the biggest polluters on the planet, some of whom, such as Chevron, pay no corporate income tax or PRRT tax. The minute we opened our inquiry in Perth, the government released its Callaghan review, which was its flaccid attempt to change the PRRT. They know—and, Senator Cormann, you know—that that petroleum resource rent tax regime has not delivered for the Australian people. It was set up at a time way before the development of oil and gas and the value-added processing we have seen with massive projects like Gorgon off the North West Shelf. It is not fit for purpose. It is nearly 35 years old. You knew it needed to be changed, and you implemented a review which essentially recommended that the government change it, and what have you done? You've fiddled around the edges. You've changed some of the compounding rates around companies being able to take tax deductions on exploration expenditure and on operating expenditure. You've fiddled around with some of those compounding rates, but, nevertheless, the amount of money that has been dodged by some of the biggest and wealthiest oil and gas companies—some of the dirtiest polluters on the planet, as Senator Di Natale outlined today—was nearly $350 billion.

The CHAIR: Senator Whish-Wilson, further on the point of order, I am struggling here. I'm looking at your second reading amendment which you referred me to, which talks about the Bureau of Meteorology.

It was Senator Rice's amendment. My apologies, Chair.

The CHAIR: I beg your pardon. Continue on, but we will look at Senator Rice's amendment. Thank you.

Perhaps I could ask Hansard to change my earlier contribution.

The CHAIR: They will, because they've heard your explanation.

Nevertheless, while we're on it, let's talk about my second reading amendment, because that was acknowledging that climate change is contributing to the biggest and worst drought since temperature records began in this country, which is happening right now. We acknowledge the suffering that rural communities are currently going through. We want acknowledged in this chamber and by this government that climate change is the driver of this record drought and the record misery that our rural communities are going through, and we want a government that actually acts on the underlying causes of that climate change.

If I could get back to Senator Rice's second reading amendment, which is on how we pay for this, it's a critical part of the bill. How we appropriate in legislation and new laws to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on a critical area like mitigating the effects of drought and adapting rural and regional areas to drought is essentially at the heart of this bill. We've raised concerns about giving that money to the National Party when they've so completely rorted and stuffed up a number of public programs in rural and regional areas, and we've raised concerns about how that's going to be funded. It's a simple principle that polluters should pay. These big oil and gas companies pay nothing in tax at the moment. It is not fair. It would pass no pub test in this country.

This is a very good amendment that I recommend to senators and to this chamber: that we actually fix the PRRT and take this opportunity now to put a floor on the tax rate that means polluters have to pay money now—not indefinitely defer it into the future but pay Australians now, pay farmers who are suffering now and pay for the pollution that they are creating and the climate catastrophe that they have helped create.