Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Senator Marielle Smith is right on one count: the Greens definitely are not keen on the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023. In fact, we think this is a terrible bill, and there is good reason that we think this is a terrible bill: this bill is a blatant attempt to facilitate more oil and gas development in our oceans. The major parties are bending over backwards to pass this legislation to facilitate the Barossa project and other fossil fuel projects off Australia's northern coastlines. We know that the Barossa project alone is expected to release 13 million tonnes of CO2 every year. That's around three per cent of Australia's annual carbon emissions. This is at a time when the globe is no longer heating; it is cooking. It is boiling, and this is what the Labor government is doing. This release of carbon dioxide will take place even with this greenwashing of the proposed carbon capture and storage.

On 2 November, the Federal Court granted an emergency injunction on the Barossa Gas Project after a legal challenge by Tiwi Islands traditional owners, and I say: hats off to those traditional owners, who have been fighting this fight for a better climate and to stop their islands from getting annihilated by the climate crisis. This action means that Santos must immediately pause installation of its proposed 263-kilometre pipeline until at least 5 pm on 13 November, when that matter will return to court. This is not the first legal challenge Santos has faced in relation to the Barossa and the traditional owners. Last year, Santos lost an appeal against a landmark decision that overturned approval for its $4.7 billion Barossa offshore gas projects. And still the Labor government is not learning from that. We should not be supporting a gas project that is emitting such huge amounts of carbon and threatening the lives, the livelihoods and the homes of people in Pacific nations. The Prime Minister is there at the moment, and no amount of dancing by the Prime Minister is going to stop the climate crisis unless Australia stops opening up new coal and gas.

Labor might want to make light of what the Greens on this side are saying or what Senator Rice just put on record, but for us this is a very grave matter. The climate crisis is an existential crisis, and no other bill will matter on a dead planet, to be really frank. We have said this before, and we will keep saying it until you listen. We are in a climate crisis and we are approaching a climate catastrophe. As I've said before, the climate isn't just warming anymore; the planet is cooking. We are in the era of global boiling, and people all around us are fearful. Young people in particular are so stressed about the future that they are looking into. We have extreme heat, fires, droughts, and floods. Today the temperature in Adelaide is predicted to be 40 degrees centigrade. We've missing chunks of sea ice bigger than Western Australia, and oceans continue to heat up. People are fearful and people are angry, and they have a right to be angry. They are angry at this government's arrogance and refusal to take urgent action in this climate urgency and emergency. We should be fighting the climate crisis with everything we've got, yet here we are with the Labor government fuelling the climate crisis.

Not only that—their proposed solution of carbon capture and storage, which doesn't work and hasn't worked, is just trying to dupe people into believing that they are doing something. We know pumping carbon under the sea from gas rigs or storing it underground just doesn't stack up. Importing and exporting carbon dioxide for sub-seabed sequestration risks turning Australia's oceans and those of our near neighbours into the dumping grounds for the world's pollution. That's what this bill will do.

We know that the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis examined 13 of the world's major carbon capture and storage—and carbon capture, utilisation and storage—projects, and what did they find? They found that more than half of them underperformed, including two that had completely failed. Supporters of carbon capture and storage often cite Chevron's Gorgon as an exemplar of a functioning facility, yet, in the 12 months to June 2022, the project injected only 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the underground reservoir and vented 3.4 million tonnes to the atmosphere. How is this working?

It is absolute greenwashing, and it is ridiculous that the government is pushing for more carbon capture and storage even though everyone knows that it doesn't work. We know that the Barossa and other projects will make the climate crisis worse, yet we keep pushing for them. We know why the major parties keep pushing for that. It is because they are completely beholden to the donations of the fossil fuel companies. At the end of the day, when people ask me what is this about, why the Labor government isn't looking at the signs and taking urgent and real action to deal with the climate crisis, that's the only response they can come up with: the government's pockets are being filled by money from these fossil fuel companies.

We know that all of this is going to make the climate crisis worse. Coal and gas are fuelling the extreme climate crisis, and Australia is one of the biggest exporters of fossil fuels and a major contributor to this crisis. While the climate boils, what do we do? We bring in these greenwashing bills that do absolutely nothing but make the climate crisis worse. So both Labor and the coalition are wilfully ignoring all the signs. All of what Senator Rice read from that book chapter is actually true, so, rather than making fun of it, rather than making light of it, maybe it's worth your while actually listening to the science for once and acting on what the science is telling you.

The government should be taking tangible, meaningful steps to fight climate change by ending the expansion of new fossil fuel projects. You should withdraw this bill and actually take the real action that the community is demanding, that the scientists are demanding and that will actually make a difference to make this world safer.