Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022 as the Greens spokesperson for resources. Whilst the Greens are supporting this bill, we do so knowing that it can be better. Having a secured and very important package will help households and businesses transition away from dirty gas, because we know gas is as dirty as coal and needs to stay in the ground. I'm glad that Senator McKenzie mentioned gaslighting, because that's what the Australian public have been listening to for the last decade: this gaslighting relationship around how great it is and how it should be drilled and taken out of the ground.

This bill will provide some relief, yes, but what it won't do is bring down the prices in a meaningful way, because it doesn't address the core issue, and that is not supply. That's the gaslighting that the opposition would like to have us believe. The core issue is actually a lack of a concrete and funded plan to transition away from dirty and expensive gas to clean, green renewable energy, which is actually the cheapest form of energy in Australia. Whilst a price cap and a mandatory code of conduct for the gas industry are welcomed in the short term, the long-term solution is in fact renewable energy. It's not the 114 new coal and gas projects currently in the pipeline, and it's not the $42 billion in subsidies that this government is handing out to the fossil fuel companies on a silver platter rather than actually investing in renewable energy. It's supporting households and businesses to upgrade their appliances and transition to renewables; it's political donation reform, like my colleague Senator Waters talked about both today and in the last sitting; and it's establishing a national transition authority, which is the bill that my colleague Senator Allman-Payne has introduced. The Greens know that there are long-term solutions, and we are fighting for them.

But, as always, it is the major parties that are lagging behind time and time again and dragging this country down with them. We've seen a decade of denial and now we're seeing more delay. Privatisation has failed to deliver cheaper energy in this country. What privatisation has done has been to allow companies to make billions of dollars in profit, which they're not paying any tax on and which they're giving their executives big bonuses with. Electricity is an essential service. It's something that is an inherent part of day-to-day living now and something that's so important that it should not be in the hands of capitalist interests in this country. These companies only have one thing in mind, and that's to make money. In many circumstances, but especially this one, the public good must come first, before corporate profits—the gluttony and greed of gas companies in this country, as we've heard from Minister Husic.

The Victorian government promised to build publicly owned renewables and revive the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. The South Australian government is flirting with the idea of reversing some of the privatisation of South Australia's power assets. Western Australia is the only state which has kept its electricity assets under government ownership. I make it no secret I have my issues with the WA government, but this is one area where they've made the right call, despite the fact that this is only one aspect of energy generation and a lot of the supply chain is still privately owned.

Public ownership can go one step further in ensuring that First Nations people own assets as well on their country. Don't forget when you stand in this chamber every morning that this is stolen land. Here in the parliament, wherever you go in this country, this land was stolen, and that's the truth. The land on which these energy companies have their assets on is stolen. The resources that they dig up and drill for are stolen. The wealth that these companies have made is stolen wealth. That you can't get away from. It belongs to us. It belongs to the First Nations people across this country.

We get an absolute pittance of what is made on the spot market and in other places selling this and it being exported overseas. That's why we still have disparity of wealth in this country, because we're not being given a fair go. As we transition away from dirty fossil fuels, mining communities, which the Nationals love to talk about, need to be supported through a national transition authority. First Nations communities also need to benefit in that because there's a disparity of wealth—open your eyes and have a look around your regional towns—in those country towns as well. Federal, state and territory governments have to commit to having First Nations owned renewable assets. This is a key to respecting our sovereignty in this country.

Giant fossil fuel companies have been getting off light with their behaviour across the supply chain. At one end we saw heartbreaking destruction by Rio Tinto of the Juukan Gorge, the sacred place that held thousands of years of cultural heritage. Frankly, it's an embarrassing lack of consultation by Santos in the recently upheld Tiwi Islands case of the Barossa gas field. Recently the government handed down its response to the Juukan inquiry, and we look forward to working with the government in implementing these recommendations. On the other end, we see companies making record-breaking profits. They have significant power imbalances when they enter our communities, and they have price hikes that are not controlled.

Whilst this code of conduct mainly applies to the wholesale market at the end of the supply chain, it will also have implications for domestic production at the start of the supply chain. The determination of Barossa is integral as part of this yarn, part of this story. It's something that I promise you I will keep talking about in this chamber: free, prior and informed consent from gas companies. It is something that I will keep talking about in relation to the approval of environmental plans and the destruction of cultural heritage.

It's all part of balancing the ledger, Senator Scarr. We understand and indeed hope that this code of conduct will be wide reaching in reining in some of these giant, tax-dodging, greedy corporations, but ultimately we over here at the Australian Greens know that the true solution is to stop propping up this industry and to transition away from dirty coal and gas. The time to do this is today and now. Thank you.