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

I'll take that interjection from Senator Pratt. It's quite absurd to be pointing to jobs as Western Australian jobs when they haven't been created yet. The thing I've been hearing from employers is they can't find workers. We've got a crisis when it comes to workers, and yet we have a Labor government that came to government saying, 'Climate change is going to be taken seriously. The adults are in charge,' punching down on the coalition's efforts, and a Labor senator from WA saying that this is about jobs, about creating future jobs. It's an absurd argument, given what the job market is like in Australia.

What we're seeing today is just extraordinary. I really thank the coalition for allowing democracy manifest, for allowing this in here for people to be able to ask questions, because the crossbench have serious concerns about this bill. I go back to Minister Regenvanu. Standing here as a crossbencher, I agree with him; your rhetoric is different to your actions. You're talking the talk about climate action, and yet you're putting through this bill. And Australians will continue to ask the question: Why? Why do we have a government that isn't governing for the people? Because Australians are doing it tough. We rightly hear concerns about the cost of living, and we know that one of the drivers of the cost of living is insurance premiums going through the roof. We've got the Assistant Treasurer telling us that he's gone off to meetings and spoken to insurers, and they've essentially warned Australia that climate is going to make insurance premiums go up and up and potentially become unaffordable, or that parts of Australia will be uninsurable.

In the face of that, the government's facilitating a bill that will potentially expand the fossil fuel industry using unproven technology to the scale that's being promised. In the last—it's been a week now, hasn't it?—week in this chamber we've been discussing this stinkiest of bills, and one of the things we've talked about is the gorgon, one of the biggest carbon capture and storage projects in the world. It hasn't delivered anywhere near what they promised. It hasn't delivered on what they said: 'Approve this project because we'll do this.' Approved the project, haven't delivered—oh well, keep trying to put that carbon underground. And so Australians are looking at their government, the people who are tasked with looking after them and looking ahead at the problems that are coming, and saying, 'How can we deal with these and turn them into opportunities?' We're going to get more and more Australians questioning the government, saying: 'How can you continue to take donations from fossil fuel companies and then tell us that it doesn't influence what you're doing, when what we're seeing go through parliament would suggest otherwise?'

These are companies that, at every turn, have sought to minimise how much they contribute, whether it's the petroleum resource rent tax with offshore LNG, where Australians have basically received nothing because of the overly generous compounding offsets and deductions that those companies receive. Yet the government keeps telling us that we take these donations but, really, that's just part of being a political party in 2023: you take political donations from an industry that is contributing to life becoming increasingly harder and, in some parts of the country, to making living there impossible.

It's not me saying that; it's the IPCC. The IPCC is saying that, if Australian governments continue with the expansion of the fossil fuel industry here in Australia and don't step up and push globally for countries to come good on their Paris Agreement commitments, then large swathes of the Northern Territory will become uninhabitable.

Again, we'll probably see the major parties point at the Independents and the minor parties and say, 'You may have that view.' But it's not us; it's the IPCC that is saying these things. So, Minister, to return to my point: what do you say to Australians who are just scratching their heads and saying, 'How are these decisions continuing to be made in 2023, the hottest year on record'? We know that the Labor Party doesn't take donations from big tobacco, because we know the impact that tobacco has on people. Why does the Labor Party continue to take donations from the fossil fuel industry?