David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

As mentioned earlier, COP27 came to a close overnight with really little achieved in terms of reducing emissions. Australia played a more positive role than we have previously, which some would argue would not be hard. On the Climate Change Performance Index we still rank ninth last, out of 65 countries. This is a long way from the climate leadership spoken of by the government. Continuing to subsidise the fossil fuel industry will only make things worse. Giving money to the profitable industry responsible for global warming, given what we know about the state of the climate, makes no sense. Funding of the Middle Arm project is particularly bad.

The government has committed $1.9 billion to fund, as we heard, common-use infrastructure, which we are assured will be sustainable. Senator Grogan said that this is not a fossil fuel subsidy, but in estimates we were told that it is up to the market to decide. The NT government and private companies are openly talking about using it for fossil fuels, such as gas. If this proposal looks like a petrochemical plant, has the government ducking and weaving on whether it is a petrochemical plant and has the support of the gas industry then it seems to be a petrochemical plant.

At estimates the week before last I asked the department about what cost-benefit analysis had been done for this project. They weren't able to answer, so we still don't know how we can justify this $1.9 billion spend. I also asked if they were aware that the site chosen for Middle Arm, according to modelling done by the CSIRO and IPCC, will be underwater by 2100. They weren't aware of that either. So, while it's great to hear about the environmental impact assessments that will be undertaken, we're missing the whole point about climate change.

I think Senator Canavan highlighted that in his speech, when he talked about the need to continue to invest because it's profitable. With climate change, whether or not it's profitable is beside the point. Is it morally right to continue doing what we're doing given what we know about climate change? Not just given what we know, given what we're seeing—the flooding across the country, the droughts in the Horn of Africa.

We've heard people in parliament argue against loss and damage for people who live in countries who've contributed next to nothing to this issue, who are pleading with us to show some leadership. Finally, we have a government that's saying the right things, that's saying we will be leaders on climate. We're not seeing that yet, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that we continue to see them heading in the right direction, but $17.9 billion for a fossil fuel project is not heading in that direction, in the direction that Australians want, that millions of Australians voted for.