David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is not my first speech. They're calling this the climate parliament because it has to be. The future of people and nature across the country, across the globe, depends on the action that this parliament will take. It's the climate parliament because a third of the people in this country voted for someone other than the major parties, many of them electing Greens and Independents. It's the climate parliament because the next three years are going to determine if we can use political power for good, to work together and deliver climate action—and we must do so.

Let's be clear: we are running out of time on this, and failure comes at an impossibly high cost. If we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere, we will destroy ecosystems and threaten the lives of billions of people. The thing to do now is simple. It's to stop digging up coal and gas. You can't put out the fire while pouring petrol on it. We need to plan for and then deliver the end of coal and gas. Pretending we can continue with business as usual, while the planet is taking it in turns to burn and then drown, is delusional. We know, because every credible climate scientist has told us this, that emissions from burning coal and gas are driving the climate crisis.

We need to plan for a future for coal-dependent communities in places like the Hunter in New South Wales. Pretending we can continue business as usual with these industries as they chaotically shut down while cooking the planet also betrays those coal-dependent communities. It's not fair to them. They deserve a safe and prosperous post-coal future, which will not be delivered by a government with its head in a mine.

We need to stand with First Nations people in this fight for country. It's their country, and that means joining with traditional owners such as the Wonnarua plains people in the beautiful Hunter Valley, who are fighting for country after so much of their land, their culture and their connection has been stolen by multibillion dollar mining corporations. In New South Wales we've seen the Ravensworth homestead, site of appalling frontier conflict, violence and murder of First Nations people, being threatened with the expansion of an open-cut coalmine from the global bottom-feeding corporation that is Glencore—a climate catastrophe and an act of cultural devastation all in one proposal. But Glencore did not account for the powerful First Nations resistance of the Wonnarua plains people. They've fought this proposal. They've rallied and they've lobbied, and they're still fighting. We stand with them and we stand together to fight for our collective future. The decision on protecting their land and their water—their connection to country—now lies with the new Labor environment minister. If land, culture, country and the future mean anything, there is only one decision she can make, and that had better make Glencore bloody unhappy.

This week a record 12 Greens senators in this place and 16 MPs across the parliament are ready to deliver on that clear mandate for change. While the threats are real and the destruction is brutal, the good news is that dealing with climate change is an almost impossibly big opportunity for Australia. While other countries need to end coal and import energy, we can end coal and become a green energy superpower. Australia has the highest wind and solar capacity of any developed nation and a wealth of critical green energy materials. That gives us an extraordinary leg-up in the post-coal world we need to start building. That is why, as Greens, we will keep pushing Labor further and faster to make Australia a world leader in clean energy. This is essential for the planet. It is essential for nature, and it's bloody amazing for Australia.