Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

With the election of Joe Biden and the predictably graceless but thankfully now inevitable demise of Donald Trump, Australia is left even more exposed as an international pariah on climate action. We have the US now committing to a zero-emission electricity sector by 2035, yet Australia now remains a global outcast on climate, along with countries like Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Leave aside the issue of national pride, leave aside—for now—the catastrophic impact on nature, on wildlife and on billions of people mostly living in poverty around the world; this will have massive local human and economic consequences.

But, sadly, it won't be the coal huggers or the gas boosters in this parliament who will bear the brunt of it. Nor will it be the executives of the fossil fuel companies who have purchased the Liberal, Labor and National parties in this place. It is going to be the working people of Australia who'll pay the price. Every day we waste in this place not taking action on the climate on our terms we make it even more certain that the decisions will be made on somebody else's terms. That means in the parliaments of other countries. That means in the boardrooms of the same fossil fuel companies. If we don't take action on our terms then more Australians will be thrown on the scrap heap more quickly. We need to make sure that we do take the action that the climate science says we need to take.

In doing so, we need to support the people and the communities who have built their lives and their economies around fossil feels and logging native forests. We need to support them through the inevitable transition that is approaching us. If we don't support them through the transition, the transition will happen to them anyway. We need to work with them to understand their fears, to understand their desires and to support them through the transition. We have to close the revolving door between the major parties and the boardrooms of fossil fuel companies in this country and we have to end political donations from those corporations and from the big loggers so that we can start looking after the climate, repairing nature and looking after the working people of Australia who need our support.