Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator David Pocock for bringing this matter of public importance before the Senate today. Indeed, as the government mentioned, it is very similar to a matter of public importance we discussed yesterday. I think it is worth talking about this today, yesterday, tomorrow or ongoing, day after day, because the significance of this development is extraordinary. You listen to the government's greenwash and spin, basically saying: 'This is going to be a wonderful precinct. It's all going to be focused on renewable energy, hydrogen, great jobs.' They don't want to talk about the fact that the Middle Arm development is all about having a conduit and having an industrial precinct to work with the Beetaloo basin, to work with the massive fracking of the Beetaloo and the massive climate bomb that is the Beetaloo basin. That is why this proposal is there to set up this Middle Arm precinct. It is a 1,500-kilometre precinct three kilometres from the outskirts of Darwin involving massive petrochemical development. It is very close to residential areas. I grew up in Altona, next to an oil refinery, and I know the impact of living next to a petrochemical development. But the government are saying, 'No, no, don't you worry about that; this is all about renewable energy.' If the government were serious about that, they could rule out having gas processed at Middle Arm. They could say: 'Yes, this is a renewable energy precinct. We are going to have renewables. We are going to have hydrogen. It might be a precinct that will facilitate the underwater cable to get renewable electricity into South-East Asia.' These are the sorts of things that could be. But we know it is associated with the Beetaloo basin, and the Beetaloo basin is a carbon bomb. It is a massive development. It will result in massive carbon pollution that the world just cannot afford.

I just do not understand what part of the climate crisis this government, along with the Liberal Party and the National Party, don't understand. Don't they understand that a month ago the world had the hottest days that have been experienced on this planet for 100,000 years? Don't they understand the extent of the fires that are currently burning in the Northern Hemisphere, the thousand fires that are currently burning in Canada, primarily on First Nations land? Don't they understand the fact that we have just had record low sea ice extent? We are heading for a disaster. We are in a train travelling at 300 kilometres an hour about to go over a broken bridge. There is catastrophe on its way unless we stop the mining and the burning of coal, gas and oil.

The last thing that Australia needs to be doing, the last thing the world needs, is a massive new fossil fuel development like the Beetaloo basin and for it to be facilitated by $1½ billion of public money. It is just extraordinary. Anybody that listens to the science, anybody that understands the seriousness of the crisis, would say we should not be developing new coal and gas. In fact, we've got the UN Secretary-General telling us that we have got 'global boiling' going on. We have got people who know about the climate crisis pleading with Australia and other countries to not develop new fossil fuel developments, and yet here we've got a government that is blithely ignoring that, taking us on that runaway train heading over a cliff. It is absolutely extraordinary.

This is the reason that we need to keep talking about this. This is the reason that, yes, we do need to have a Senate inquiry into Middle Arm. This inquiry was in fact agreed to by the Labor Party during the separate Senate inquiry into oil and gas exploration and production in the Beetaloo basin. The government agreed to it then. These are the sorts of things that need to be explored in a Senate inquiry, to see why Australia thinks that it can be so far off track and away from the direction that we need to be heading in if we're going to have a safe climate for our kids and a safe climate for us now. It is an extraordinary thing to be proposing, and the Greens will continue to want to talk about it until it is stopped.