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

Last week the IPCC sounded a final warning alarm on the climate crisis. This crisis began over 250 years ago in this country, with colonisation. Climate change and its root causes cannot be separated from colonisation. First Nations people are hit first and worst by the impacts of climate change, yet they have benefited the least from the dirty, polluting industries that the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 targets. These are industries that have generated trillions of dollars of stolen wealth, all at the cost of polluting and killing our lands, our waters and our skies. We are in a climate crisis, though I would like to remind you all that the majority of First Nations people have been in crisis every day since colonisation, as we have been pushed off our land and forced to stand back and watch the colonial project destroy our lands and waters in the pursuit of extracting fossil fuels. For this reason there can be no climate justice without First Nations justice.

The UN Secretary-General has called last week's report a final warning, a code red for humanity, a clarion call to do everything, everywhere, all at once. How many times have we heard such urgent and desperate calls to action fall on deaf ears? In every new report he is forced to come up with new words to try to convey the urgency and seriousness of this message, and yet every time this happens the Australian government ignores this message and continues to bleed this land dry and pollute its waters and skies. This land is our mother, and we are killing her. Every time a new coal pit is dug, she is wounded. With every new fracking well that is driven into her veins, she bleeds.

I appreciate the government's efforts to cut emissions and bring forward the decarbonisation of heavy polluting industries. I commend the work of the Greens in securing an agreement which makes this bill and its rules something to not be completely ashamed of, which is what most climate bills in the last three decades have been. With the agreed changes, we will finally see genuine cuts to emissions in the biggest industries that are responsible for 30 per cent of our domestic emissions, not to mention all the emissions that occur overseas from exported products. I support the agreed changes that the Greens have secured and have been in conversation with the government around some additional changes to go one step further in their climate action and to ensure First Nations people do not get left behind.

This is particularly in relation to fracking in the Beetaloo. I have heard from First Nations people across the continent about the harms posed by fracking and their unanimous opposition to these dirty projects. First Nations people have resisted the extraction of fossil fuels, especially fracking, for decades. First Nations people across the Beetaloo right now are desperately calling for fracking to stop and for the protection of their cultural heritage, and yet, rather than listen to the voices of grassroots First Nations people, this government has not yet ruled out supporting fracking in the Beetaloo.

A recent freedom of information request exposed a secret report to the National Indigenous Australians Agency that concluded that traditional owners in the Beetaloo basin won't benefit economically, socially or culturally from the fracking of their country. This report obtained under FOI also stated that traditional owners are at a clear disadvantage when negotiating with gas giants. Anyone who has actually spoken to any First Nations people in the Beetaloo region will tell you about the manufactured consent that has been obtained by land councils and how hard it is for them to have their basic rights upheld.

When it comes to the Beetaloo, the government has stated publicly that it is committed to implementing recommendation 9.8 of the Pepper scientific inquiry into fracking in the Northern Territory, which ensures the gas industry is required to offset all scope 1 and 2 emissions and domestic scope 3 emissions. I support the government and the Greens ensuring that all scope 1 emissions will need to be offset, and I support the referral of scope 2 and 3 emissions in the Beetaloo to the ministerial climate change and energy council. However, this does not go far enough. I foreshadow that I will move a second reading amendment seeking assurance from the government that, following the review by the council, they will ensure scope 2 emissions in the Beetaloo will need to be offset. Fracking the Beetaloo makes no sense from a climate point of view. Most importantly, there is still no consent from the First Nations people. Given the clear disadvantage of traditional owners when negotiating with gas giants and their almost unanimous opposition to fracking, which came out of the report recently released under FOI, this government must prevent any further activity in the Beetaloo unless and until genuine free, prior, and informed consent has been obtained. I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the lands—