Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am speaking in support of this legislation, the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023. The Greens have been able to negotiate with the government to improve this package to ensure that the money that comes from the Reconstruction Fund is actually spent on high-quality jobs that are going to future-proof our nation. The key amendment moved by Senator Whish-Wilson is to ensure that none of this money is squandered by the fossil fuel industry, which for far too long has taken dollar after dollar—tens of millions; in fact, billions—of taxpayers' money in order simply to carry on polluting and ruining our climate. It is time it stood on its own two feet. It doesn't need any support from any type of government fund going forward. This should be the first break in handouts to the fossil fuel industry, the first break in what should be a long list of cuts to handouts to corporate welfare to the coal and gas industries in this country.

We heard the resources minister herself, Madeleine King, saying that, if fossil fuel industries can't stand on their own two feet, it's up to them. Come on then, Minister, scrap all the fossil fuel subsidies in this year's budget, scrap all the fossil fuel subsidies that continue to be a drain on the public purse and that in fact should be going into projects and programs that help everyday Australians and not line the pockets of these corporations who are continuing to pollute our environment. And, most of them, of course, are shipping all of their profits offshore as foreign entities. This amendment that the Greens were able to secure to ban this fund going to any fossil fuel projects is fundamental, and it is a shot across the bow to an industry that needs to evolve and move on.

When you hear of those statistics and when you hear the science from the world's scientists and through the IPCC report released last week, we are running out of time, not just as a nation but as a globe, to tackle dangerous global warming. For every step we take to reduce pollution, you have the fossil fuel mafia doing what they can to make the job even harder. In the dying throes of the fossil fuel industry, they want to double down and get it while they can to make the profits while they can. And, yet, time after time after time, they have their hand out for public subsidies and support from the public purse. So this amendment is fundamental to how this parliament and the current government must start dealing with the fossil fuel mafia in this country—no more corporate blackmail from any industry that is pushing our climate to the brink, that is sucking our public purse dry and that continues to mislead the Australian community with their bogus greenwashing claims.

I would like to commend the huge amount of effort that my colleagues in this place have put into getting this bill to a point where we can support it. Senator Allman-Payne, from the great state of Queensland, has put in an awful lot of effort in relation to this piece of legislation and is someone who understands that if you want a thriving community you must invest in the jobs of the future, is someone who understands what real transition means for a community like Gladstone and is someone who is willing to roll up her sleeve sleeves and put in the effort to ensure that when we pass pieces of legislation in this place it actually has a real impact on people's lives. So I would like to thank her for her efforts in this.

This legislation of course is being debated on the day that the Greens have just announced that we will pass the government's safeguard legislation. It, too, when first drafted, did far too much to help the fossil fuel industry than it should have. Thanks to the abilities of the Greens to negotiate and drive a hard bargain, we will now see pollution under the safeguard mechanism go down and not up. It is ludicrous that the government thought that they could put a piece of climate legislation in 2023 into this parliament that would have allowed pollution to grow and with the rank greenwashing that comes from suggesting that as long as you can offset everything you can keep pushing pollution sky high. Well, the Greens' hard cap on pollution will mean that actual pollution goes down, not up, and that is a significant win for the climate and a good move from the Greens in this place to deliver an outcome that is much better for our environment. I'm sure that as the days roll out this week we will hear the squealing from the mouthpieces of the fossil fuel industry in this place about how hard done over they are. Well, let me say this. For every squeal of the fossil fuel industry this week over these negotiated amendments, there is a smile from mother nature. Every time you hear the mouthpieces of the coal industry over these coming days as we debate this legislation, just remember that future generations will know and will be thanking us for pushing pollution down, because we are on the brink of climate collapse, and tinkering around the edges is not enough.

What we've been presented with by this government has been a pretty weak attempt at dealing with the issue. Their climate target is too weak. Their impost on the fossil fuel industry is too weak. But we have managed to improve and strengthen that legislation so that, for the first time, we now have a cap on real pollution; pollution will go down, not up. That is exactly what the scientists are telling us we need to be doing—and we need to be doing quickly.

We also know we have to clean up the bogus offsets in this country. It's not good enough to have a set-and-forget scheme where some people are raking in millions of dollars because no-one's really looked at the legitimacy of their offset projects. One of the key negotiations the Greens have managed to get out of this package is that the integrity of those carbon offsets will be frozen, looked at, considered, reviewed. Those offsets that are found to be dodgy will need to be scrapped. It beggars belief that it even had to be a negotiation, frankly. If we are determined to set the train back on track to have a liveable climate, we desperately need to be acting now.

But of course we know who pulls the strings in this country in terms of the politics of both major parties in this place, and it is the coal and the gas industry. They continue to roll out the donations. They continue to have the slick PR machines. They greenwash their way through the halls of parliament and put their hand out every chance for a public subsidy and a cash handout from the public purse. It's time that came to an end. Both in this reconstruction fund and through the safeguard mechanism negotiations, the Greens have blown a hole in the fossil fuel industry in this country, and we are very proud of that. I can't wait to hear the squeals from the fossil fuel mafia.

The types of manufacturing jobs that we need to be investing in and using this fund to invest in should be the high-quality jobs of the future. And I say this as a proud South Australian. When our car industry collapsed in South Australia, workers were promised new manufacturing, and they're still waiting. Funds like this should be used to invest in an electric car industry in Adelaide. They should be used to invest in the renewable energy industry right across the country, creating the real clean jobs of the future. We know that, during COVID, one of the biggest problems we had was accessing supplies, because we had seen a decade of undermining and unhelpful policy from the government, which meant we had a sovereign risk. We couldn't even make—