Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to add my voice to this debate and to associate myself with the comments made already by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson and Senator David Pocock. This bill is a sham. This bill, the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023, is actually called 'sea dumping' for a reason, because all this bill does is dump on the planet while paving the way for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.

Let's not forget who has put forward this bill—Australia's Minister for the Environment and Water. If our minister for the environment is the one shepherding through a piece of legislation that allows the continuation and expansion of fossil fuels, by allowing the big polluting corporations to literally sweep the pollution under the carpet, let's be clear about what this bill does.

This bill allows the fossil fuel industry—coal and gas—to bury their rubbish and their pollution in the seabed. So, rather than stopping the pollution and rather than cleaning up, they want to bury it under the sea—unproven pseudoscience. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, warned of exactly this—that fossil fuel companies 'have humanity by the throat'. He warned that, if governments and parliaments around the world didn't stand up against this type of pressure, we would see more pseudoscience and PR spin from the fossil fuel industry, who do everything in their power to keep expanding their dangerous, toxic polluting operations that are putting humanity at risk. They will keep going and keep going until they can do no more.

But we in this place have a responsibility. We know that the climate science is dire. We know that we are already hurtling towards a cliff when it comes to the global temperature rise. We are already seeing the real impacts of the climate crisis here in Australia today. We're only into the first few days of November and already we have seen bushfires in Queensland destroy over 60 homes in the last fortnight alone. We've had two people die in New South Wales in bushfires and 27 homes destroyed since July. In the Northern Territory we've seen 13 million hectares burnt in the last two months—and the list goes on.

For those of us who live in the southern states, we fear what this summer is going to bring. I live in the Adelaide Hills, and I can tell you that I and every single one of my neighbours are on high alert. We know that this summer is going to be horrid. Only the other day we could smell smoke drifting through the valley, and everyone was worried: Is this going to be the summer that our house is lost? Is this going to be the summer that our community is devastated? Is this going to be the summer that fossil fuel companies burn our towns to the ground? That is what communities right around this country today are thinking about and feeling. Rather than tackling that and taking on the fossil fuel companies that are fuelling these climate fires, what we are seeing is the government of the day doing the work for the big fossil fuel companies, by not only paving the way to allow them to expand but giving them the cover of a green-washing bill like what we have before us today.

We know that what has to happen is the pollution must stop being produced, not continue some pretence that we can keep going at the rate we're going and just bury it under the ground. Ask any primary-school-aged kid whether that argument would fly at home when their room is a mess: 'I'll just brush it under the bed and pull over the cover. No-one will see it.' It's not good enough. It's a disgrace and, worse than that, it is risking, in the sickest of sickest sense, the future of this planet, the health of our environment and humanity as we know it.

So let's be clear: who really wants this piece of legislation? The reason this piece of legislation is being rammed through and rushed through this parliament this week is that it's Santos, the big gas company, who need this done. They want this done. They're donors to the major parties and they want a pound of flesh for their penny. They want this done. So rather than putting in place a plan to reduce pollution, to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and say, 'We need a proper transition. We've got to get out of this dirty, toxic industry and into energy production that is clean, green and sustainable,' we have ministers in this place coming along and handing up on a silver platter exactly what the fossil fuel industry and companies like Santos have asked for. This is all because of the safeguard mechanism legislation that was passed in this place earlier this year with, after strong negotiation by the Greens, amendments that meant the fossil fuel industry would have to do more to reduce their emissions and that there would have to be more transparency around how much pollution was actually being produced. What does that do? That costs industry and the company money. Well, they don't want to have to pay. So here's your quid pro quo, a facilitation to pretend that this industry can just keep going by burying its toxic rubbish and pollution under the sea.

We know it's not just Santos; it's also other companies that are worried about what they're going to do and how they're going to keep expanding. They want to use Australia and our oceans as a dumping ground. There is a big push here on the Australian government from the Japanese government in relation to this issue, and that is another reason why this is being pushed through at warp speed today. The Japanese government and its state owned companies have behaved appallingly since this parliament passed the safeguard mechanism agreement. What has become clear is that they are simply not serious about climate action and are now using their diplomatic powers to push Australia to go slow on the climate transition. This bill is an appeasement to their complaints.

To the Australian government, the Labor Party: stand up for what you believe in. You are either committed to climate action and reducing pollution or you're just going to keep handing up on a silver platter what Santos and the big fossil fuel companies want, and backflipping and bending over backwards for foreign owned companies, Japanese or others, so that they can keep expanding their dirty industries. Meanwhile, it's Australian bush and nature and communities that burn.

How can it be that the Australian government, the Labor Party, stand here today and say, 'We need this bill because it will help deal with the pollution problem,' when all it's going to do is bury the pollution under the sea? It's ludicrous. As Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, himself said, this is pseudoscience and should be called out. It's all PR spin. And the Labor Party and the Dutton opposition are happy just to let it go, to facilitate it, because their election donations depend on it and there is pressure inside both sides. We know that there are some in government who desperately want a better climate policy from the Labor Party, but, gee whiz, they are held back by the fossil fuel and coal and gas rump that still dominates the government's decisions. I wonder whether the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, likes this bill at all. But here it is, under her name, facilitating more pollution, burying that toxic pollution in the seabed and trying to pretend that it's actually good for the environment.

If you want a definition of greenwashing, this is it. The environment minister should stand up and call this out for what it is. It is not a bill designed to protect the environment. It is a bill designed to protect the profits of Santos and all the other fossil fuel companies that want to keep expanding for as long as they possibly can. While pollution continues to rise and while this government allows new coal and gas to expand, the climate fires in this country will get hotter and hotter and more deadly. That is what we do know.

As you vote on this bill in this place today, rammed through by both sides of the chamber, the Labor Party and the Liberal Party in lock arms, doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, just think about what you're going to say to your communities over summer when their towns are on fire, when the bush is covered in ash, when people have put their masks back on, not because of COVID but because of smoke and when the temperatures are so hot in our suburbs that the elderly and the sick are dying. What are you going to say to them? 'Oh, Santos asked us,' or, 'The Japanese government said we needed to do something quickly. They were not happy.' Think about what you are going to say to the elderly in your community who are suffering over the summer because of extreme heat. Think about what you're going to say when the bushfires are on our screens every single night. What is the Prime Minister going to say when he goes to the Pacific Forum later this week? What will he tell our neighbours about what he is doing? Think about that.