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

I rise to speak in support of the bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2], my wonderful colleague Senator Hanson-Young has brought to this chamber this morning. I want to echo some of the comments she made about the importance of this bill and add my voice to this debate.

It has been set out that there are nine matters of national environmental significance under the EPBC Act. Emissions-intensive activities are not one of those. There isn't a climate trigger currently, so we are here having this debate. There's a clear gap in the legislation that allows for the continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry against very clear scientific evidence. The advice says no new coal and gas projects and no new fossil fuel projects can be expanded or opened if we have absolutely any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees and, in particular, upholding our commitments to the Paris Agreement. This advice also says we need to reduce emissions by 75 per cent. Seventy-five is the magic number, yet here we are, having this debate with over 100 fossil fuel projects in the approval pipeline and with only a weak 43 per cent emissions reduction target. We thought we had a change of government a year ago, but this government still sees no issue. In fact, it seriously lacks ambition and has a blatant disregard for the science. There is no current legislative requirement for the climate impacts of these projects to actually be taken into consideration. That is the legislative gap.

The government may want to ignore the very clear scientific evidence. They may want to ignore the traditional owners, who don't want this project on this country, but we, on this side of the chamber, in this block, the Australian Greens, will keep standing up and will keep saying the same thing: we will keep demanding people listen on behalf of the science and behalf of those traditional owners. We will absolutely make sure and keep pursuing justice, as this government should be doing in the first place. They came into this place talking about how they were going to change things, how they were different from the opposition. This bill that exactly that. This bill that Senator Hanson-Young has brought to this place today does exactly that.

As other speakers have already noted, in 2005 the Prime Minister introduced a very similar bill to this. So the government knows there is a gap. The Prime Minister knows there is a gap to be filled. Now they actually have the power to do something, but what do we hear? 'Forty-three per cent is all we have to offer. The climate wars are over. We need gas for the economy. There's a domestic gas shortage.' That is a lie. We finally hear the government is committed to taking climate action and—