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

The climate crisis, and we are in a climate crisis, sits alongside the continued existence of nuclear weapons on our planet as the two greatest threats to the peace and wellbeing of our human community. This is the reality of the moment in which we live. This is the reality of 2021. For the nations, particularly for the island nations, of our Asia-Pacific region, climate change is not a far-off abstract; it is a present reality, as it is for the fire-ravaged communities of Australia, as it is for the farmers, as it is for all those whose lives and livelihood depend on the land. It is something observed by people who in their lifetimes have seen changes in their environment around them, in their communities, and it is something that is observed by those who can trace their connection to country back hundreds of generations.

This federal budget presented another opportunity for action—action to create a sustainable, safe and inclusive future for everyone, action to create safe sustainable jobs, and action to support those currently working in fossil fuel industries to transition to new renewable clean industries. These were all of the potential opportunities on the table which the Morrison government could have taken. Yet what this budget has revealed is a government interested in only one thing—serving its corporate donors, who yesterday filled this place like lice scurrying about trying to find and identify just exactly what they got for all those donations and all those dinners, going through the budget line by line, identifying exactly what they got for their time. It was revolting. A whole bunch of them were grinning with the additional $1 billion the government has decided to give to the fossil fuel industry every single bloody year over the next four years.

You know what? I've had so many of these debates in this place over the last four years, where the Greens have contributed science and evidence. This movement has spent decades—the community has spent decades—putting forward detailed plans stepping out exactly how we do this and all of the reasons why. Young people have driven ourselves into the ground trying to get the attention of the major parties and trying to get them to act. We have struck, we have disrupted and we have given our time. Young people so often make the journey to Canberra or to their state parliament and make the case for their own future. The reality is—and I am reminded of it by nights like last night—that the problem isn't that you people don't know that climate change is a thing; the problem is that you don't care. You don't give a damn. You'd rather go to a dinner with a miner or the pokie industry or a gas merchant or the owner of Harvey Norman than take action on climate change and safeguard our future. That disgraceful disregard is exactly why the young people of this country, come the next election, will vote you out of office, and good riddance to the lot of you.