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

I rise to speak on the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2023, and I am pleased that the Greens have been able to secure so many changes to strengthen this mechanism. Thanks to the strong negotiations of Greens leader Adam Bandt and his team and thanks to the Greens being in the balance of power in the Senate, coal and gas have taken a huge hit. We've stopped almost half of the 116 coal and gas projects in the pipeline from going ahead, pollution will actually go down and we've derailed the Beetaloo and Barossa gas fields. Prior to these amendments, Labor's reheating of Tony Abbott safeguard mechanism was a company-by-company net emissions target that reduces by 4.9 per cent a year. Under Labor's original draft, the mechanism covered the top 215 big polluters in the country, but, if a company exceeded its net target, it could purchase carbon credits generated by other companies' pollution cuts or carbon offsets that have no integrity, such as fencing land. A company's real pollution could still have risen. Labor's original safeguard mechanism was a plan full of accounting tricks with no real cuts to pollution, and it allowed more coal and gas and did nothing to stop the 116 new projects for coal and gas in the investment pipeline.

The Greens have secured changes that will make a big difference. I'm going to run the chamber through those but first some important scientific context. Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released its latest report, its sixth synthesis report, collating and analysing the wealth of scientific, economic, health and social impact research done in recent years. Nothing in the report is surprising—the world's scientists have been warning us for years—but the evidence is still shocking. Humans have changed the climate, and we are paying the price. Australia is just one of the countries that's contributing to this problem, and Australia is, in fact, one of the countries that is most exposed to climate damage. This is not just about future generations anymore. The impacts of the climate crisis are being felt already—devastating bushfires, floods, heatwaves, declining biodiversity, coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, sea level rises putting Torres Strait Islander communities at risk. We've heard these warnings before and the nation's parliament has ignored them. We've squandered the last critical decade under a climate-denying government. It's time to act as if we are going to keep global heating below catastrophic levels, and the time to do that is now.

The IPCC report also confirms that we can still act. Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming reduces the risks and makes us safer. We have the solutions we need. We know what needs to be done. So far, we have just failed to do it. The pace of change must be accelerated to bridge the massive gap between where we are and where we need to be.

The UN Secretary-General has called for developed countries like Australia to get out of coal, oil and gas; to stop licensing new projects and to stop allowing existing projects to expand. We cannot put the fire out while we are pouring fuel on it. That's why the Greens will continue to call on the government to commit to no new coal and gas projects. Not one of those 116 projects currently waiting for approval can go ahead if we are serious about tackling the climate crisis. We need to go all in on making the transition to a sustainable energy system. We need investments in new technologies, in manufacturing and in supporting the industries of the future. We need to support affected communities as we phase out fossil fuels. All of this is possible. It's also essential, and it's urgent. The IPCC could not have been clearer about this. The cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action, and we owe it to the planet, to our children and to their children to act now and get out of coal and gas.

It's in this scientific context that the Greens sought to negotiate with Labor to try to stop new coal and gas. We pushed and we pushed and we pushed. But in a climate crisis the Labor Party still wants to open more coal and gas, and when we're negotiating with Labor it's like we're negotiating with the political wing of the multibillion-dollar fossil fuel industry. Despite Labor's unwillingness to act urgently to prevent all new coal and gas, we have secured significant changes. The Greens have stopped about half of those 116 new coal and gas projects from going ahead. We've secured a hard cap on pollution which means pollution will actually now go down and not up, and the coal and gas corporations can't just buy their way out of it with offsets—dodgy or otherwise.

We've secured a pollution trigger which, for the first time in history, means that the remaining coal and gas projects will be assessed against the hard cap for their impact on the climate and can be stopped. We've derailed both the Beetaloo and Barossa climate bombs. The Beetaloo and many other new offshore gas fields will now be required to be CO2 net zero, casting serious doubts over their viability. That is excellent news for those First Nations communities atop the Beetaloo Basin that have never provided consent to that project and do not want it to go ahead, risking their land and water and our shared climate. We've also secured a range of other amendments, including wiping out many of those dodgy offset projects and methodologies, which will bring us much closer to a future without coal and gas. This is why people put the Greens in the balance of power—to push Labor further and faster on climate and to get action on coal and gas.

Without significant amendments, the Greens will be voting to pass this bill and will back the regulation, but the fight against new coal and gas will not stop. We will fight every single one of those remaining projects. Before we started our negotiations, under Labor's plan actual pollution from coal and gas was going to go up and there was nothing in the safeguard mechanism to stop new coal and gas. Real pollution under the safeguard mechanism must now come down, and a failure by Labor to ensure that happens will mean that Labor is breaking the law. With the safeguard pollution trigger, Labor now has the power to stop coal and gas projects that would breach the pollution cap. Every new project that gets approved from here on in is Labor's direct responsibility.

This fight is not over. If we can grow our movement and get more Greens in this place we'll be able to achieve more. The only obstacle to stopping all new coal and gas in this parliament is Labor, the Liberals and their fossil fuel donors. We need to build community power to overcome them. We'll continue to push to strengthen the environmental laws that will come before parliament later this year. We'll continue to fight fossil fuel subsidies in the budget—the $11 billion of freebies in cheap diesel and accelerated depreciation that the fossil fuel companies get but that ordinary Australians don't get. We'll continue to back the fights of communities right around the country who are fighting those coal and gas projects that are in the pipeline, including in Scarborough and Narrabri. We know that the people are with us. We are in solidarity with First Nations people, with climate scientists, with our Pacific island neighbours and with the majority of people who believe that we shouldn't be making the climate crisis worse by opening new coal and gas.

I'm going to take the opportunity to run the chamber through the effect of the amendments that the Greens have been able to secure. Firstly, we've stopped about half of those 116 new coal and gas projects from going ahead. And, as I mentioned before, it's because we've secured a hard cap on pollution, which means that pollution has to actually go down—it can't go up—and the coal and gas corporations can't buy their way out of it, which will mean that many of those 116 new projects that are in the investment pipeline simply cannot go ahead.

Secondly, we have secured a legislated hard cap on pollution. Before we started negotiation, real pollution under the safeguard could rise, and coal and gas emissions were forecast to go up. For the first time, we can be assured that pollution will go down and not up. Pollution must fall, and offsets won't count to stay under the cap. The polluters can't buy their way out of this hard cap.

Thirdly, we've secured a pollution trigger to stop coal and gas projects. For the first time in history, the government must assess the impact that new coal and gas projects will have on the climate. If a new project is going to lift overall pollution, the government must act to stop it going up, including by restricting or stopping the project. If they don't act, they'll be breaking the law. This is a huge barrier to new coal, oil and gas projects proceeding.

Fourthly, we've derailed the proposed Beetaloo basin gasfield, which I just referred to. We've derailed that mass fracking of that carbon bomb. The reason for that is that the project will now face an extra cost of an estimated $1 billion a year as they're forced to offset all their emissions—all. This is a huge financial barrier in the way of a project proceeding, by forcing them to be net zero from day one, and it brings its viability into serious question, which we celebrate.

Fifth, we've derailed the proposed Barossa gasfield. Tiwi Islanders who've been fighting this project will have received a huge boost, as Santos will now be required to offset all its CO2 emissions—again, placing a huge financial hurdle in the way of this dirty and unwanted project that does not have First Nations consent.

The sixth thing we were able to achieve through our negotiations was to require new offshore gas fields to be net zero. New gas fields feeding existing LNG plants will require their CO2 emissions to be net zero—again, putting further hurdles in the way of new gas. We've stopped dodgy offset projects. We've helped stop the greenwashing of the safeguard mechanism. Low-integrity offset projects generating human-induced regeneration ACCUs—Australian carbon credit units—will be stopped until they go through an independent audit. This could take up to a quarter of future offsets out of circulation. This will force more onsite pollution cuts from companies. Companies will also have to report on and justify their use of offsets to make it easier to fight corporate greenwashing.

We've stopped coal and gas funding. The Industry Research and Development Act, which is the law that the Liberal and National parties used in order to hand out millions in fossil fuel subsidies and grants to projects such as Beetaloo, will be changed to ban coal and gas funding. The new Powering the Regions Fund also cannot be used to fund coal and gas. In fact, about an hour ago we successfully stopped the National Reconstruction Fund from being used to fund new coal and gas as well.

We've limited toxic methane. Methane, as I hope people know, is a more damaging global warming gas than even carbon dioxide, and it's the main pollution from coalmines. Methane monitoring of coal and gas projects will now be toughened, leading to deeper cuts again in pollution. We've secured sector-by-sector pathways to net zero. The Climate Change Authority will have to provide advice on the development of net sectoral transition and emission pathways for the purposes of guiding future policy and investment decisions. And detailing sectoral pathways to net zero will make it much harder for new coal and gas projects to be financed.

So, coal and gas have taken a big hit, thanks to the amendments secured by the Greens, but the fight is far from over. We were demanding no new coal, oil or gas. The UN Secretary-General, the IPCC and the International Energy Agency were demanding no new coal or gas. That is what the science requires. We just got a lecture on the laws of the economy. I see you, and I raise you the laws of physics. You can't argue with the climate crisis. It's not going to be fooled by the dodgy accounting tricks that we saw in the original version. I am so pleased that we have been able to strengthen this mechanism, and I am so pleased that with this hard cap we will now have prohibited about half of those 116 coal and gas projects from proceeding. That is a great first step, but we are coming for the rest.

We have now given the government the ability to assess the climate pollution of all of these projects, and we will be urging them to reject every single project, as I am sure will the community—well, anyone who cares about a livable future. Side-by-side with First Nations communities, we will fight every single one of those remaining coal and gas projects, and we will fight side-by-side with coal workers and gas workers in existing communities who want an economic future, who want a diverse future for their region and who want a say in what comes next as the world continues to turn away from dirty fuels and embraces clean energy. My colleague Senator Allman-Payne has done some wonderful work in that regional transition space, and we hope to have some good announcements to make on that in the months to come.

We're all in this together. I am sick of the fossil fuel companies buying the outcomes that suit their private profits, buying off the people in this place. It is not a democracy; it has been a plutocracy until now. I'm so pleased that the fossil fuel companies are hopping mad about these changes. It was so heartening to see their stocks fall yesterday, particularly those of Tamboran, the company that is mostly behind the Beetaloo basin. I look forward to genuinely making the transition to a 100 per cent clean, renewable economy, with all of the jobs, all of the hope and all of the prosperity that that can provide to Australia and the world. We've taken a step along the way. It is certainly not enough, but it's a step in the right direction.