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

I move:

That the Industry Research and Development (Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Development Program) Instrument 2021, made under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986, be disallowed [F2021L00547].

It's a bit like Groundhog Day, really, isn't it? The Greens are in here, once again trying to stop this government from giving public money to big coal and gas to open up new ventures—right in the aftermath of Glasgow and when we're in a climate crisis, and just as those same companies have donated generously to the re-election funds not only of this government but, sadly, also the opposition.

So here we are again and—spoiler alert!—we'll be back here again tomorrow on a different disallowance to stop giving yet more taxpayer money to yet more coal and gas companies, this time to frack the Beetaloo Basin against the wishes of First Nations communities. But today it's a different legislative instrument to give free taxpayer money to wealthy gas and coal companies. And today, with a vote on this disallowance, the Senate has the chance to stop $50 million going to coal and gas companies for that mythical technology of carbon capture and storage.

An honourable senator: The unicorn!

The unicorn indeed! Combined with today's $50 million and tomorrow's $50 million on the Beetaloo disallowance, which we urge the Labor opposition and the crossbenches to stand with us on, that's $100 million. We senators could stop $100 million of taxpayer dollars, public money, flowing into the offshore bank accounts of coal and gas corporations. We could do that here in the coming days. And I might note that those same corporations often don't pay a cent of tax in Australia because they exploit loopholes that ordinary Australians don't have access to. And those same corporations pour millions into the re-election coffers of the big political parties. The instrument that we're seeking to disallow today would set up the Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Development Fund. Grant recipients have already been announced for the fund and—surprise, surprise—some of Australia's biggest polluters and this government's largest donors make the list. Political capture and storage is a proven technology even if carbon capture and storage is far from it.

Let's have a look at all the money this government is handing over to coal and gas corporations through laws and regulations that are before this parliament right now. There is $15 million to major donor Santos, which is also a deeply embedded lobbyist that often cycles staff in and out of the offices of MPs and back to work for Santos again. I might note that the $15 million Santos will receive under these various instruments is a pretty good return on investment for them, considering they've made $2.1 million in political donations over the past nine years. Then they get back $15 million from the taxpayer. That is a very good return on investment. I don't know if you'd get that anywhere else.

Also under these instruments, $5 million would go to a subsidiary of Australia's largest coal exporter, Glencore. I might add, they're another donor. They also have a reputation for tax avoidance. Boral will get a few million dollars too. The chairman of Boral, Ryan Stokes—the son of billionaire Kerry Stokes—asked the Treasurer to be the best man at his wedding. That's a nice little cosy relationship. There are cash handouts for Santos but also for companies like Beach Energy, which is another Kerry Stokes company, to access billions of dollars of public money through the Emissions Reduction Fund, with the government paying the polluter to, maybe, store just a small portion of their emissions.

In yet more taxpayer larks, the Beetaloo fracking grant—which we'll seek to disallow tomorrow—will give Liberal aligned gas company Empire Energy $21 million of public money. But Santos also have their hand out under that fund, alongside two other secretive companies operating out of tax havens, for another $29 million. There's also $30 million for Australian Industrial Energy, which is wholly owned by Australia's second richest billionaire, Andrew Forrest, to build a new gas-fired power station at Port Kembla.

A bill's moving through the House right now that would formally relieve major gas donor Woodside of around $1 billion in liabilities for clean-up costs, for their old rig, and spread that across the entire industry. It's that same Woodside company that my colleague Senator Cox just pointed out has had some favours done for them by the state Labor and federal Liberal governments in the approval of the latest climate disaster that would be the equivalent of 15 coal-fired power stations in a climate crisis.

Political capture clearly works, but we know that carbon capture and storage does not. Its whole purpose is to pretend that we can keep burning fossil fuels. We cannot. That is perfectly clear, after the Glasgow pact, which this government signed on to while it was there and has been crab walking away from ever since it returned and Mr Barnaby Joyce had another tantrum. Carbon capture is the perfect excuse for coal and gas companies and their wholly owned subsidiaries in the Liberal and National parties to pretend that we don't have to worry about the climate crisis or climate collapse. If those big coal and gas companies truly thought that carbon capture was the future, surely they'd be putting some of their own money into it. Instead, they spend that money on donations, and they get the taxpayers to pick up the bill.

In June 2004, Prime Minister Howard said that he was providing $1.5 billion 'to demonstrate breakthrough technologies'. Seventeen years later we are still throwing public money at coal and gas companies, hoping for this technology to break through, while clean technologies have thrived and grown around the world and work and create jobs, often in regional communities where they are needed. Just one carbon capture and storage project has been developed in Australia, despite billions of public money having been thrown at that process. Chevron got $60 million in public funding for that one and it's broken down more times than a 1980s Datsun. CCS is a waste of money. It's not even a waste of those companies' money; it's a waste of taxpayer money, because those companies won't waste their own money on it.

We've got the solutions that we need to solve the climate crisis. We've got the wind, the solar, the batteries, the electric vehicles and the green hydrogen. We've got those technologies. We've got that innovation. We have those skills onshore and those resources. All we need is a government with ambition to take on the coal and gas corporations and to create the jobs of the future in clean, renewable energies—jobs that will last, jobs that will safeguard the livelihoods of those in currently fossil-fuel-reliant communities, jobs that won't risk the health of those workers and jobs from which they won't be sacked when their big coal company mechanises and automates.

In Glasgow, Australia signed up to the Glasgow climate pact along with nearly 200 other countries. A critical part of that agreement—that same agreement that, as I said, the government signed up to while it was there and, on return, has been distancing itself from ever since—is to phase down fossil fuel subsidies. You'll recall that the G7 had also earlier resolved to phase out public subsidies for fossil fuels, from memory, within the next three years.

So I say to my colleagues on the opposition benches, on the crossbench and in government: let's start the end of those fossil fuel subsidies now. Let's disallow this $50 million slush fund for big coal and gas corporations and use that money for real climate action instead. Let's use that money to work with those currently fossil-fuel-reliant communities to plan that transition, because it's coming, and, if we don't plan for it, it will be those workers and those communities that suffer from your lack of reality and your lack of planning and the fact that you are completely in hock to the fossil fuel sector. Let's use that time and that money not to give handouts to your political donors that are cooking the planet but to work with communities and transition to a job-rich clean energy future that will reduce people's power bills and provide work. That's the kind of leadership that the country deserves.

We're heading to an election. The Greens have a proud plan to fund a massive investment in renewable energy—publicly funded, great job creation, tackling the climate crisis, protecting what's left of our Great Barrier Reef, because half of it has already gone. It's not just bleached; it's dead, after cumulative coral bleaching episodes. This is the choice people have to make, and the Senate is going to be crucial for that, because, at the moment, we've got a government that's completely for sale to the fossil fuel industry. We've got an opposition that continues to take their donations too, I might add, and they should stop accepting those, as well. And we've got One Nation, who take money from just about anyone and just tick off on whatever the government proposes.

The next election is going to be crucial. The climate cannot wait for some leadership and for some decisions that are made on the basis of science and in the public interest, not on the basis of a future fancy lobbying job or of a big political donation.