David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Three years ago, Professor Graeme Samuel was commissioned by the previous government to do a report on our national environmental laws. It was scathing. They are not working and need to be updated. He found:

The impact of climate change on the environment will exacerbate pressures and contribute to further decline. In its current state, the environment is not sufficiently resilient to withstand these threats. The current environmental trajectory is unsustainable.

What we're seeing in Australia is state capture by the fossil fuel companies and a negligent failure to act by both sides of politics. We know too much now to continue down this path. We have Labor ministers, Labor senators, telling us about the projects they are approving when it comes to renewables, and at the same time they're ramping up our fossil fuel exports. We know how urgent this is. It is now negligence. We are throwing our future under the bus for short-term profits.

During my last year in high school, 2005, the now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, introduced his own private member's bill to insert a climate trigger into our environmental laws. That was 2005. Here we are in 2023 and we've got a Labor government that has the numbers to do that today but won't do it. You have to ask yourself why. Why are we seeing this inaction from Labor? We are disrespecting our climate scientists. We have scientists, like Dr Joelle Gergis, who have put their life into raising the alarm, into telling us how bad it is. She was the lead scientist on the sixth IPCC report. It was the last one, the last warning before the window of 1.5 degrees to two degrees closes, yet we're seeing inaction from Labor. We must do better. (Time expired)