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

I rise to speak to the Greens' Galilee Basin (Coal Prohibition) Bill 2018. This is a bill that would keep coal in the ground. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC—the international coalition of the vast majority of the world's scientists—have clearly said that we cannot afford new thermal coal in the system. We are already on a trajectory to three or possibly four degrees of global warming, and we've seen the havoc that our communities and our planet have experienced at just one degree of warming. We've seen the summer with millions of hectares of our nation burnt, with lives lost, with homes lost, with productivity lost and with people's lives ripped apart. That was just at one degree of warming, and this government's complete absence of climate policy has us on track for between three and four degrees of warming.

So this is why the IPCC—the world's climate scientists—are saying: 'No new coal.' But what do we have? We have approval for the Adani Carmichael coalmine issued many years ago—with bipartisan support, I might add—where the climate impacts of that mine were not even assessed by our so-called environmental laws. The bill that we've just been debating would fix that, and it would say that you can't approve a coalmine without looking at the impacts that it will have on our climate. But we heard some pretty bizarre contributions that somehow seemed to fail to grasp that fairly logical point.

We have bipartisan support for the Adani Carmichael coalmine to proceed, and the defence that the opposition gives is that it got its approvals. Well, it got its approvals under laws that don't require its climate impacts to be assessed. It got its approvals by extinguishing native title, which the state Labor government have done to the Wangan and Yagalingu people.

There is no saving grace for this carbon bomb. This bill would cancel Adani's approval, and it would say to folk like Clive Palmer: 'You can't buy your way into a new coalmine in the Galilee Basin. The Galilee Basin coal has to stay in the ground, where it belongs and where the science says that it needs to stay if we are to have any hope of constraining global warming so that there will be a liveable future for us all.'

This is a very simple bill. In fact, I introduced it back in 2018. So I was a bit perplexed that we heard from the opposition that they haven't had enough time to consider the bill, because it has been on the books since 2018. Methinks there's a bit of nervousness in taking a position on coal. We see this continued lack of spine. Sadly, we saw a somewhat positive announcement about a 2050 zero emissions target but no plan to get there in the interim. We saw the opposition leader espouse the need to still be exporting thermal coal by 2050. Are you serious? The science is saying that we can't handle any more thermal coal in the system now, let alone in 30 years time. This bill would keep that coal in the ground where it belongs. It would respect the rights of traditional owners in that basin area, including the Wangan and Yagalingu people. It would protect that groundwater from being polluted and overused whilst other farming operations are starved of water in that region which has been in drought for so very long.

The big parties don't want to vote on this bill. It's all very inconvenient for them to take a position on coal. One wonders whether the massive donations from big coal—and big oil and big gas for that matter—have something to do with their reticence to embrace the global transition to clean energy that is already underway. It's almost $10 million that big coal, oil and gas have donated to both sides of politics since 2012. I think it's $5.8 million, if my memory serves me correctly, to the Liberal and National parties, and $3½ million to the Labor Party. We don't think that the money should be allowed to be donated to political parties. We don't think that big coal should be able to buy off political parties' silence and their continued support for a fossil fuel that the rest of the world is already transitioning off.

Global thermal coal demand is down—it continues to be down—and renewable uptake is skyrocketing. Australia is best placed to service that global demand. We could be a renewable energy superpower, and we're now not the only ones saying that. But if we don't tackle our export of coal, we will never be able to act on the climate emergency we are in. We need to recognise that the global transition away from thermal coal is already happening, and we need to stand with those coal communities and transition them into what comes next. It's not rocket science, folks. We can have clean energy jobs that protect those communities. We can have mining jobs that mine for the minerals that are needed for renewable energy components. We can have mine rehabilitation that, sadly, is badly needed for the 50,000 abandoned mines that pockmark this nation.

There are so many jobs that those communities could be transitioned into, many of which won't require any retraining at all. Those skills will be directly transferrable. Those communities know that thermal coal's days are numbered, but they're not hearing any plans from either the government or the opposition on how to cope with this transition that's already happening. They're desperate for that conversation about what comes next for them, where their future prosperity is going to come from, whether their town will stay alive. We want those towns to stay alive. We want that conversation to happen with those communities, and those communities deserve those jobs. But they deserve real jobs, not lies from multinational companies that, on one hand, say there are going to be a stack of jobs but then, in court, admit that it's going to be a tenth of that and then, out of the other side of their mouth, say, 'Oh, but we want to automate from pit to port.'

These communities know when they're being lied to, and they can see the global transition that's already underway. It's just staggering, when conservative governments around the world—even Boris Johnson in the UK, for heaven's sake—are accepting the climate emergency and taking some small steps to tackle it, that there is still bipartisan support for new coal mines in this country. Well, I'm really proud that the Greens continue to be the voice to advocate against new thermal coal mines, to advocate for that transition to 100 per cent clean energy as quickly as we possibly can. We know we've got the technology to do it. We know it creates new jobs, that it doesn't make workers sick, that it doesn't kill workers on mine sites or give them black lung disease. We know we've got that technological capacity, but what's perfectly clear is that we lack the political will. And, again, people are asking questions about whether the big donations are buying the complicity of both of the major political parties. People can draw their own conclusions about that, but it seems pretty clear-cut to us.

Now, 50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is bleached—50 per cent of that coral cover has died permanently—after two successive bleaching events, in 2016 and 2017. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA—that reputable and recognised international body—says there might be yet another mass bleaching that will cripple the reef this summer. That's 64,000 jobs that rely on the reef to remain healthy, to remain alive, to not be half-dead. Yet we see a defence from the government that somehow the 1,464 possible jobs with Adani outweigh the 64,000 actual—in real life, already existing—jobs that rely on the reef remaining healthy. Even in their own morally bankrupt jobs-and-economy-only frame of reference, the figures don't add up. And when you factor in the cost of the climate-fuelled natural disasters that we've just seen wreak havoc on this nation, it doesn't add up on that metric either.

Then, look at the cost to nature—a billion animals burnt, extinction at all-time highs and our very planet on the brink of collapse. It doesn't seem to matter much to this government. They've never really paid much attention to the climate science, and they're probably not going to start now. But we beg them to do just a little bit of reading. Rather than sacking those CSIRO scientists, why don't they listen to them and get some advice about the economic cost, if nothing else? They don't care so much about the cost to nature, but they could at least look at the economics of it.

We could be a renewable energy exporting superpower. We could have that prosperity. We could create those jobs. We could tackle the climate crisis all at once. That's part of what we call a 'green new deal'. This is exactly what many other countries are now talking about. It is gathering global momentum. We can have that prosperity in a way that looks after nature and supports workers. But what we need to do is keep that Galilee coal in the ground. It's not just Adani. Clive Palmer has his claws in there and I think Gina Rinehart has a few proposals, and there are a few other big multinational coal companies that want to open it up—there are about nine coalmine proposals. If we were to allow the basin to be opened up, it would be the seventh largest emitter in the world, if it were considered to be a country. That's how big this coal basin is.

There is a reason that a new coal basin has not been opened up for 50 years, and there is now a scientific imperative why we don't open one. But both this government and the opposition have waved through approvals for the Carmichael coalmine. They don't care about water impacts and certainly don't care about extinguishing native title. They don't care about the climate impacts and they don't care about the lies about job creation rather than the reality of the reef jobs that will go and agricultural jobs that will be threatened with the continuing change in the climate. They don't care about the potential for real renewable jobs for mining rehab, for mining minerals for renewable energy components. The solutions are there. But, sadly, the big parties in this nation are being blinded by the big dollars flowing from the big polluters. It's as simple as that, and it is heartbreaking, because money and power should not be wrecking the future for all of us. But that is precisely what's happening under this government's watch, with the complicity of the opposition.

So we commend the Galilee Basin (Coal Prohibition) Bill to the Senate. But we are not allowed to have a vote on it today, because, sadly, the opposition didn't have enough time to consider a bill that was drafted and introduced in 2018. We all know what that actually means. They just don't want to have to vote for coal and they don't want to have to vote against coal. They wish everybody would stop asking them about coal. Well, those coal communities actually deserve the truth. They deserve a decent answer and they deserve to be consulted on what happens next for them, for their families, for their region and for their community. The Greens are up for having that conversation. We had the Senate inquiry into regional jobs, which went to many of those coal communities last year. People know what's happening. They are not stupid. They actually can see that the world is turning away from our dirty coal. There is a reason that none of those private financiers are backing Galilee Basin coal. There is a reason that they can't get insurance. There is a reason that they have their hand out to get funding for the railway line. The private market does not want to touch new thermal coal.

Just last week, India announced that they want to stop coal imports in 2022, I think it was. They have said that before. They are holding fast to that position—2022 isn't here yet, former minister Canavan. The rest of the world is already making that transition. This government, sadly with the support of the opposition, is losing the chance for us to position ourselves as a world leader in renewable energy—to create those jobs, to help protect what's left of the reef from another bleaching episode, to protect the beautiful biodiversity on which life depends. And yes, we're not even allowed to vote on this bill today. But we Greens won't stop talking about global transitions off coal. We won't stop advocating for those coal communities to be consulted, to be protected, to be transitioned. We don't want that shock that will come overnight when those multinational coal companies just pull out of coal. We've already seen many of those large coal companies put an end date on their own coal extraction activities. The market gets it, folks. The community gets it. What will it take for the big political parties to get it? I'm incredulous that they are so in denial of the scientific and economic reality. There's a reason that the vote for the larger parties is the lowest it has ever been in history. They don't feel that you're listening to them. They want democracy back. They are sick of corporate donations getting outcomes for corporate profits. They want communities' interests to be put first and they want the planet protected.

The first step in doing that is to back this bill, to keep that Galilee coal in the ground, to respect the rights of the Wangan and Jagalingou and other traditional owners in that area, to stand with those coal communities and give them a future—a legitimate future, not lies about jobs that will never eventuate but real jobs—and to protect those real jobs that already exist around the reef and agriculture, which are massively climate exposed. We'll never know what the position of the big parties is on this bill, because they won't vote on it today and they probably won't let us bring it on again. But the community is watching. They want action on the climate emergency, they want justice for those coal communities and they want a future to share for us all.