Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023, and I do so in the knowledge that the Pacific Islands Forum is underway this week and that our Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, is expected shortly to fly in. I also do so in the knowledge that the call from Pacific island nations and their leaders is very clear and stark. That call is for Australia to actually take the climate crisis seriously, to stop publicly subsidising the burning of fossil fuels and to stop approving new fossil fuel projects.

Of course, the reality in this place is that, right here, right now, today in the Senate, the major parties have colluded to stitch up a dirty legislative deal on behalf of Santos, one of the major members of the gas cartel in this country. The stark, harsh reality in Australia is that the fossil fuel lobby have got their hooks into the Labor, Liberal and National parties, and they've got them in deep. They've got them in through the mechanisms of political donations and the revolving door—which has existed for a long time, exists today and will, unless we do something, exist into the future—whereby politicians and their senior staff roll out of this joint, after years in here doing the bidding of the fossil fuel companies, and into cushy, plum jobs in the board rooms or in senior executive levels at those very same fossil fuel companies, or into public relations or other consultancy firms advising those fossil fuel companies. We all know it, colleagues. Let's call it out for what it is: corruption. That's what it is. That's why, when our prime Minister, Mr Albanese, arrives at the Pacific Islands Forum this week, he's going to ensure that the communique that comes out at the end of that forum is watered down. You can bet London to a brick on that outcome. Australia is most emphatically not going to allow a communique to come out of the Pacific Islands Forum with Australia's name on it that talks about not subsidising fossil fuel companies or not approving new coal and gas projects. We know that, where new coal and gas projects are concerned, this Labor government in Australia falls over itself to approve them.

Australia is one of the biggest net carbon emitters in the world. When you factor in our exports, we are in the top handful of net carbon emitters in the world. It's all very well for this government to come into this parliament and legislate a 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030, consistent, I might add, with more than two degrees of global warming. The stark reality is that this government is continuing on the calamitous trajectory that the former government had us on, and that calamitous trajectory is to a future where we are at risk of having an unliveable planet, where we are at risk of billions of people being displaced from their homes, where we are at risk of the ecological systems that ultimately provide the relatively stable climate that we've all enjoyed here in our lifetimes and that people have enjoyed around the world coming to an end. If you don't think it's coming to an end, look at some of the temperature records that are being set month after month, year after year. Look at the reduction in the glaciers. Look at the reduction in the ice sheets. Look at the melting of the tundras. Look at the bushfires. Look at the floods. If you can't see it happening, folks, you're just not paying attention.

I think you can see it happening, but you don't want to acknowledge it. That's what I think. That's what I think the cognitive dissonance is in this place. That's why the Australian Greens will be moving an amendment to the second reading on this legislation, which would, at the end of the motion, add the words:

… but the Senate:

(a) notes the advocacy of Pacific leaders that the greatest threat to the wellbeing of the region is the threat of runaway global heating caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas—