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

[by video link] I rise, both digitally and metaphorically, to speak to the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Equity Investments and Other Measures) Bill 2021. I want to begin by congratulating my now affirmed and sworn-in colleague Senator Dorinda Cox on her first not-first speech in the chamber. It's a great shame that I wasn't there to be with you when you were sworn in earlier, matey, and I can't wait to be working alongside you in this space for the truth, for justice, for healing and for treaty and not to be stuck on the other side of a computer in doing so.

The coming of this bill at the beginning of this parliamentary sitting is in many ways really prescient. It comes at a moment when the community is alive with a desire to see two primary outcomes from their parliament this week. They want to see a strong response and a strong and urgent action plan in relation to climate change formulated and taken to Glasgow—they want to see a plan which has a strong target in relation to 2030 and doesn't continue to engage in the myth that, if we leave the action till 2050, we can actually address it—and they want to see an end to the drought of action, now 1,000 days long, in relation to the implementation of a national integrity commission. The Australian community are sick and tired of people who were elected to do the work of the community in decision-making spaces instead going into those spaces and working on behalf of vested interests, often fossil fuel corporations. Yet the first piece of legislation we're dealing with today is a bill arguably designed to facilitate the transfer of public wealth into private hands or, rather, to use public finances to facilitate support for private corporations—fossil fuel corporations, potentially—in building projects not only in Australia but also throughout the region. It really does speak to a fundamental disconnect. At a time when the community want to see action on climate change and want to see politics cleaned up because they believe there is too much closeness and a revolving door between the big end of the town and the fossil fuel powers in this country, the first thing we are dealing with is a mechanism by which public money may be given to private entities to develop fossil fuel projects.

Why do we have this concern in relation to these amendments? We as the Greens have these concerns primarily because if you look at what this agency does, as Senator Cox pointed out, it provides finance support to Australian exporting businesses seeking to invest in overseas infrastructure projects. It expands the range of transactions that Export Finance Australia can finance. It allows EFA to make equity investments and offer standalone financial guarantees for overseas infrastructure transactions. Under these changes, EFA will be able to help exporting companies by providing a guarantee to private banks that, if the company fails to meet borrowing obligations, EFA will take responsibility for the repayment of the loan. This comes in a context where it is very clear that global finance institutions do not want to touch fossil fuels. They have seen the writing on the wall that there needs to be urgent action and that investing in fossil fuels is a bad investment for them. So in sail these amendments to potentially offer support to projects that would not be able to get support through other mechanisms.

As Senator Cox articulated, the Greens have significant concerns about the expansion of EFA's powers, particularly given that this is an agency with a track record of funnelling billions of dollars into fossil fuel projects. It has invested, as Senator Cox rightly pointed out, nearly $2 billion in fossil fuel projects. Senator Cox made reference to the Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal and the Gladstone LNG plant adjoining the Great Barrier Reef. This is in the context of a measly $20 million in financing for renewables since 2009. So it is very clear where the priorities of the EFA currently stand.

We know that, as the globe transitions to net renewable emissions, fossil fuel companies, banking companies and insurance companies particularly are finding it more difficult to get finance. This is a global financial reality. It is the market responding to the risk of climate change. As I say that, I want to be really clear here. I am a member of the Greens and, as a member of the Greens for Western Australia, I am the last person you will ever find advocating for the free unleashing of the invisible hand of the market or to particularly put huge amounts of credence in the global views of international finance organisations. If the renewable energy transition is saving the climate and climate justice was left solely to global corporations and the machinations of the international global finance market, we would have a transition to renewable energy and to net zero but we would have climate action that would comprehensively come too late and leave out those most impacted by the climate crisis.

This is not an area that we can leave solely to the whims of the market or where we can read their indications as law. In this case, we see, I would argue, that global financial institutions are far too late to the party and have done the bare minimum in waking up to the reality that a room filling with smoke will eventually suffocate them. That's what they've done. They had an opportunity in the 1980s when they first found out that fossil fuels were causing climate change to advocate for a transition, and they decided instead to advocate for decades more of public subsidies for their projects. Having said all that, though, it is important that we factor the international financial reality into policy-making. But that is most certainly not the sole gospel upon which to make decisions.

The other thing that's really important to take account of when we consider this legislation is that, because we are ultimately considering a bill that is about the financing of projects beyond our shores as well, Australia is a member of the Asia-Pacific region and is a key actor within the immediate region in relation to island nations specifically. There is great focus among our regional neighbours in the Asia-Pacific on the need for climate action. There is a broad reality that Australia for the last 10 years or more has played the role of wrecker in international forum after international forum, blocking climate change action again and again and undermining our position within the Asia-Pacific and our relationships with our island neighbours. This has resulted in a historically poor and broken relationship between Australia and these countries, because our political articulation here within Australia has been diametrically at odds with the needs of Pacific island nations. We have, quite frankly, looked nations such as Vanuatu and Tuvalu in the eye and said, 'To be honest with you folks, the profits of BHP, Woodside, Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart and their willingness to continue to donate to us as major political parties is more important than whether you have a place to call home and whether your traditional island nations continue to exist.' This has been the message that has been continually repeated to Pacific island nations in international forum after international forum by virtue of not only our failure to act but our opposition to action.

This piece of legislation before us today is yet another demonstration of a lost opportunity and also an active failure to act. We could—and we will propose to, in our amendments—make it very clear that not a single additional cent spent by this agency would be spent on a fossil fuel project. We could do that, yet the government is refusing to do so in the legislation before us today. That is an absolute shame, and, quite frankly, in the context of the upcoming international meetings in Glasgow, it once again reveals the coalition's credibility in the climate space to be absolutely zero.

The final thing I'll say here is on the absence of transparency in relation to this kind of facility of government. As Senator Cox pointed out, the EFA is exempt from the FOI Act process, making it very difficult for us to get a clear picture of what is actually being done, in using public funds, by this vital agency and authority. That is not okay; that wouldn't be accepted in many other contexts. Again, we have an example of the material disconnect between what major party MPs, particularly those in the coalition, believe is acceptable in relation to the drafting of legislation and what the community expects. The community expects that we come to this decision-making place, to which we have been elected, and make decisions that move forward the community's collective agenda. It has been clear for more than a decade—in fact, for decades in some cases—that the Australian community want action on climate change. They do not want to see their money, public money, spent propping up poisonous, polluting, stranded assets, because doing so ensures the continual cycle of corporate money coming in and out of the major parties. They want to see action.

This bill could have been an absolute opportunity for the government to demonstrate its willingness to listen to the call of the student strikers that gathered together in Western Australia over the weekend to demand urgent action. It could have been an opportunity to echo calls from every part of the nation—from Mandurah in my state, where members of the community are fighting against the impacts of dirty developers and their connections with government in relation to Sterling First Projects, through to the desires of people across the state to see that nexus between the gas industry and the Labor government broken. It could have been an opportunity to take a step in the right direction and at least ensure that this agency is subject properly and fully to freedom-of-information requirements and that not a single cent of the money invested by this agency, public money from the Australian public purse, is spent on any new coal, oil and/or gas facility, particularly in the context where some of the most unscrupulous organisations that have ever existed in the world—that being global international banking organisations—won't touch it with a 10-foot barge pole. I thank the chamber for its time.