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

WATERS (—) (): I rise to speak to the Climate Change Bill. And I note the presence of schoolkids up in the gallery, because this is relevant to them, as it is to all of us and the species we share this world with. From the day that this Climate Change Bill was released, the Greens have been warning: what happens if the 43 per cent passes on one day and new coal and gas fields are opened up the next day? In the month between this bill passing the House of Representatives and now, this first day of it being debated in the Senate, the Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, has released 10 new oil and gas leases, covering 47,000 square kilometres of our oceans. And then, straight out of the climate change deniers' book, she described carbon dioxide this way:

It's the bubbles in your soda water or out of your SodaStream … So, you know, we've got to keep it in balance, how we think about carbon dioxide.

Secondly, the Minister for the Environment and Water refused to block a gas-fired fertiliser plant in WA's sacred site of the Burrup Peninsula. Those chemicals would erode the 40,000-year-old rock art made by Murujuga ancestors and preserved until the present day. Of course, the Greens remain committed to the fact that we cannot have climate justice without First Nations justice.

Thirdly, just last night, the Prime Minister told the Minerals Council dinner here in Parliament House that the government will deliver a predictable transition, while giving a nodding reassurance to the fact that Australia will keep selling coal and gas to the world. Well, it's predictable alright, but it maintains the lie to workers that nothing is changing. And, of course, the Prime Minister went to that dinner instead of the Clean Energy Council function which was on at the same time.

Fourthly, since this bill was introduced into the House of Representatives, the Queensland Labor government has approved the expansion of the New Acland thermal coal mine, north-west of Toowoomba, on some of Queensland's richest agricultural soil and farmland. Now, that approval would increase the mine's operation by more than 60 per cent and would extend its life span to 2034—a thermal coalmine. This is a destructive project that will trash some of our best cropping land, threaten farmers' groundwater supply and all the while contribute to dangerous climate change.

The project has been fought by farmers like Sid and Merilyn Plant, who I've personally visited several times. They've fought this proposal for over a decade. They and farmers like them have seen their communities gutted. They've ridden the emotional and economic roller-coaster of seeing, first, their land racked with drought and, then, their crops flooded. It's those farmers that should be supported by government. Instead, the Queensland Labor government continues to bend over backwards to appease the fossil fuel lobby. So how any of this squares with Labor's so-called commitment to net zero is an absolute mystery. The fact that the Queensland resources minister announced the decision late on a Friday with a two-line release shows that they know how shameful it is. Of course, you then remember that both the opposition and the government received over $10 million in political donations from the fossil fuel industry over the past decade. And you'll recall how many former ministers and senior advisers go to work in grossly overpaid lobbying roles for fossil fuel companies. Maybe Labor approving more coal and gas mines and neutering their own climate ambition isn't such a mystery after all. Ban political donations from fossil fuel companies and we might get science based decisions.

The International Energy Agency said that Labor's net zero target by 2050 can't be met if just one new coal or gas infrastructure or mine is built—not one. There are now 114 new coal and gas projects in the development pipeline. So the message is simple: no new coal and gas. Everyone from Twiggy Forrest to the Pope is saying it. You can't stop the climate crisis by opening up new coal and gas mines.

The Labor Party's target of 43 per cent was set in consultation with political scientists, instead of climate scientists, and it's at risk of failing because of new coal and gas. The committee into this bill heard evidence of how setting a 2030 target below what the science requires jeopardises that subsequent net zero target. And, because this 43 per cent target aligns more with two degrees of global heating and is not consistent with the Paris Agreement, that pushes more work into later years. If we are wasting more of our very limited carbon budget now with a weak 43 per cent target, we will have to have faster, deeper emissions cuts later.

Even for the risky two-degree scenario, Australia would need to reach net zero a few years before 2045, according to ANU climate scientist Professor Nerilie Abram, who gave testimony to the committee. Because 43 per cent is not science based, the knock-on effect is that net zero by 2050 is also not science based. For that reason, I will be moving Committee of the Whole amendments to the bill that will align Australia's targets with the science of what is needed to limit warming to 1½ degrees. This will eliminate the chance of runaway chain reactions on our climate system that we can no longer rein in. If we aim for two degrees we're rolling the dice, and there is a very real risk that, by releasing that much more heat-trapping energy into our oceans and atmosphere, we could spark chain reactions beyond human control to rein in once they're unleashed. The bill that we're debating is set above that dangerous two-degree limit, so the Australian Greens amendments that we'll move in the committee stage will change the national target to 75 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2035. That's what the science says we need to do; that's what this parliament should do.

We will pass this bill, but we want to see targets increased within this term of parliament. We want to see Australia sign up to the global methane pledge, which will see this potent, but short lived, greenhouse gas reduced by 30 per cent by 2030. That would be an important first step to prevent the early onset of dangerous planetary heating.

The Greens worked with the government to ensure that this bill, introduced into the parliament, included a no backsliding provision. We wanted to ensure that this legislation was Dutton-proof, just as we worked with the Gillard government to make ARENA and the CEFC Abbott-proof. And that's stood the test of time. We also secured agreement with the government that the Climate Change Authority's work had to be guided by the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement—not just a mere consideration, which could be trumped by politics, like the 43 per cent. Importantly, we ensured that funding agencies, like Export Finance Australia, Infrastructure Australia and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, will have to have regard to these targets when they consider granting money to projects. This makes it harder for public money to be used to further subsidise coal and gas. Next stop will be tackling the $11.8 billion in public subsidies to fossil fuels that we've had in the budget for at least a decade now. We will be looking at the October budget with a fine toothcomb to identify all of those fossil fuel subsidies. When the government has said the country is too poor to afford free child care or to raise JobSeeker above the poverty line, it is criminal to be giving away more than $11 billion in free money to polluting companies every year, particularly when those fossil fuel companies often don't even pay their fair share of tax.

We've also worked with the government to include in the committee report our shared commitment to working together on ending the use of burning native forests being counted as renewable energy. I'm sure my colleague Senator Rice will have more to say about that.

Crucially, in the report of the committee—which was chaired by my colleague Senator Hanson-Young—we exacted support to establish a legislated energy transition authority to make sure that we can look after coal and gas workers. As part of our negotiations on this bill, the government agreed to consider Greens proposals to support coal and gas workers and communities, including by creating publicly funded transition authorities to empower local communities to develop and finance plans to create new jobs and diversify their local industries. Coal workers haven't caused the climate crisis, and they should be looked after so that their communities and their kids can be assured of a prosperous future, and they should have a say in what comes next. Coal workers know that coal won't stay in the system for decades. They know that they're going to get screwed over by coal corporations. They just want a clear pathway that will ensure their financial security and keep their communities in place. We took to the election a job-for-job guarantee for coal workers so that, as we transition off fossil fuels, coal workers would get good jobs at the same pay by enabling their new employers to receive a wage subsidy of up to half the worker's former wage for up to 10 years. It's a very expensive policy, but the Greens are committed to ensuring that no worker is left behind as we transition to a clean energy economy.

So, through our negotiations, we've improved a weak climate bill. It's still weak, and it's still nowhere near enough, but it is a small step in the right direction, and the Greens will vote for it. But I will say that we are in solidarity with First Nations communities, with climate scientists, with the global community and with our neighbours in the Pacific in saying that this is the critical decade, and we are resolute that there must be no new coal and gas and a transition off fossil fuels. This could be the climate parliament. We have the numbers to go much further and faster. The only thing standing in the way of more action is this government and its cosy relationship with the fossil fuel sector, who make generous donations to its re-election campaigns, along with those of the Liberal Party.

Using our numbers in the parliament, we will now look to putting further limits on coal and gas pollution. We'll be pushing for the government's reform of the safeguard mechanism to include new coal and gas, and we will fight for a climate trigger in our national environmental laws that stops new coal and gas projects from going ahead. And, as always, around the country we will join First Nations people, farmers and community activists fighting giant new coal, oil and gas projects on their lands and water. We could be creating tens of thousands of jobs right across the country as we establish the industries of the future and become a clean energy export powerhouse. We went to the election with a fully costed sector-by-sector plan of how we would create those jobs, transform our old industries and create new ones.

Australia is the sunniest continent on the planet, with amazing wind resources and smart, adaptive and innovative minds. These resources and these huge opportunities are being wasted as each year passes. Imagine what could be achieved if Australia's energy is effectively free. Manufacturing could return to our shores again, and we could make green products here instead of exporting the raw materials overseas. Transporting ourselves, our food and our goods with clean electricity instead of imported oil would reduce the cost of everything and enhance our security. This future can happen if we rapidly transition to a clean economy powered by renewable energy and export it to the rest of the world. How? Shift electricity generation to renewables and storage; increase electricity production to allow the electrification of all households, businesses, transport and industry; soak up the remaining emissions and move to negative emissions by protecting our forests and landscapes; and reform our agriculture to draw down carbon from the atmosphere so we can start to return to a safe climate.

Critical to our plan is the phasing out of coal and gas, not only from our domestic economy but also for export. This is why our goal of reaching 700 per cent renewables is critical—because it will allow us to become a renewable energy superpower developing new export industries and new manufacturing industries, such as green hydrogen, direct transmission of renewable energy and the production of green metals. That plan would also mean the creation of 805,000 new jobs, with 162,000 of those being direct jobs and the remainder being indirect jobs created across the country, particularly in the areas most affected by the transformation—a transformation that we need in order to reach net zero in the next 13 years. So our plan would not only create more than 800,000 jobs but improve the budget bottom line by—the PBO says this—$51.9 billion over the decade as we remove those handouts for the coal, oil and gas industries and make them pay for the damage that they're causing.

As society makes this big switch, the Greens' plan supports workers to shift out of coal and into new industries by guaranteeing them employment at the same pay whilst also lifting income support for those unable to find a new job. The Greens will work to empower local communities to manage the change by developing and financing plans to diversify away from coal and create new jobs and industries as we act on global warming.

This is, and could be, the climate parliament. We are ready to do what the science says is necessary to protect our biosphere and our communities. The question is how powerful the fossil fuel donors are in this building, and that remains to be seen. This fight is not over. We will keep pushing to make sure that not a single coal or gas project is opened, because the science says we just cannot afford to do that.