David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You couldn't make this stuff up. We have an environment minister, Minister Plibersek, approving coalmine after coalmine after coalmine and never having to check on the climate change implications of that. How could you possibly come up with laws that look at environmental assessment and, when it comes to coalmines, not assess the climate impact of approving a coalmine? I'll tell you how you do that: you do that because the Labor Party and the coalition joined together to gut our environment laws and ignore the impact of climate.

Just since coming into office, Minister Plibersek has already approved four new or expanded coalmines. We're talking about 55 million tonnes of additional coal. That's about 150 million tonnes of CO2, all on Minister Plibersek's watch, actually approved by her, and not once did the minister have to consider climate impacts when doing that. That is absurd, and it's actually dangerous to our national security. It's dangerous to our regional security, as we've heard from speaker after speaker.

But what's worse is that there are another 29 of these projects lined up, waiting for Minister Plibersek to sign off—another 29 new or expanded coalmines—and under the current laws the minister will never have to consider the climate impacts. We're talking about more than 5,000 million tonnes of coal and about 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Could you imagine having environment laws that see Minister Plibersek signing off on 29 new coalmines, with billions of tonnes of carbon emissions, and never considering climate? The only way that happens is that Labor and the coalition are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industries and they want to burn our planet down.