Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In contributing to this legislation debate this morning on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct) Bill 2019, I cannot escape the context of our collective communities suffering across the nation today. We have, as we sit here, over 100 fires burning across New South Wales and Queensland, as well as fires burning on fronts in South Australia and in my home state of Western Australia. There have been more than 200 homes destroyed so far by these blazes, and many more buildings, including schools, have been affected in some of the worst-hit communities on the mid North Coast. More than 600 educational institutions, including TAFEs, will be closed for the rest of the week. We have an entire state which has been placed under a state of emergency. More than 20,000 people have been evacuated, and ADF personnel are on stand-by to assist in evacuations across the states of New South Wales and Queensland. Just as I entered the chamber, a catastrophic fire warning had broken out in the New South Wales region of Thunderbolts Way. And we have tragically seen three lives lost and many more injured.

I cannot think of a clearer definition of a moment of national crisis and emergency than that which we are now in. All across our country, people are fighting to defend their homes and their communities. Over a million hectares of habitat, some of it pristine and virtually irreplaceable, has been lost, burning in regions that have never burned before. The Bureau of Meteorology informed us this morning that this is the first day in Australia's historical record where not a drop of rain has fallen on any section of our ancient continent.

We know that these are not normal events, that this is not a natural disaster that we are in the grip of but is being driven by climate change. We know that climate change is being exacerbated by the burning of carbon emissions, the primary culprit of which is coal. Coal is the villain of the piece, yet what has the government dragged into this chamber this morning? It is nothing less than a friendless brain fart of a piece of legislation which seeks to invest the government with the power to keep open and running clapped-out, aged infrastructure that contributes to this climate disaster. It is driven by the dual factors of their ideological clinging to this old way of doing things, this old way of generating power, and the fact that they are bought, sold and funded by megacorporations which are still seeking to make profits from this industry, even though they know it is coming to the end. These are corporations without a shred of moral fibre, whose compasses long ago were cast overboard. These are organisations who, in the full knowledge that they will not exist in a financial capacity within the decade, are simply positioning themselves to do the equivalent of ripping the copper wire out of the walls before they leave the joint to burn down. That is being facilitated this morning by a so-called opposition.

I was very interested to hear yesterday members of the opposition talk in eloquent terms about how they see themselves now as a constructive opposition. It is an absolutely incredible thing to watch the Albanese Labor opposition metamorphosise from an oppositional political grouping into something more akin to a kind of governmental constructive-feedback working group: 'We won't oppose you on anything, really; we'll just tweak here and tweak there, and as long as you listen to us, ScoMo, and give us a bit of a win, we'll just kind of let you get on with it.'