Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Fossil fuel companies in Australia are amongst the dodgiest polluters in the world and are destroyers of First Nations cultural heritage. For decades they have been aided by a succession of Labor and Liberal governments.

Supply is not the issue here. Don't be fooled! Don't be a fossil fool! We export around 80 per cent of Australia's gas. The idea that we simply need to increase supply is a complete joke, but it's a joke that governments have adopted as energy policy over the last decade. More gas production just means even more exports and profits for oil and gas companies, like Santos, Woodside and Chevron. This is a government that is captured by these fossil fuel companies, allowing them to continue destroying our lands, water, air and sacred sites, facilitating manufactured consent rather than ensuring traditional custodians provide free, prior and informed consent.

Climate change is here. The climate science spells it out clearly. At the recent COP we heard stories from First Nations people across the globe who are being displaced, leaving their ancestral homes and losing their ancestral bones because of climate change. The International Energy Agency itself has said that if we are to have any chance of sticking to 1.5 degrees of warming and protecting our cultural heritage there can be no new oil and gas projects. This sounds simple, right? But the government are more interested in protecting their corporate donor mates in the fossil fuel industry than taking meaningful climate action. This government had $42.7 billion in fossil fuel handouts in its recent budget, while we are in a cost-of-living and climate crisis and while First Nations people in the Beetaloo and across the country are fighting to protect their country against fossil fuel companies.

Just yesterday, the Greens tried to stop the government lending their mates in the Victorian government $32 million for a dodgy gas development on my country, Gunnai country. It will be at Golden Beach: pristine, beautiful country that's part of Ninety Mile Beach. The audacity of the Victorian Labor government to talk treaty while they log our country and drill into our oceans, destroying our lands, waters, totems and sacred sites. (Time expired)