Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Greens' Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2]. I do so with absolute joy because prior to this role I was an environmental lawyer, and I've spent most of my working life trying to improve our environmental laws. I'm very proud to be speaking to this bill today.

As folk may or may not know, our environmental laws are really old; they were written by Mr John Howard, so that probably tells you all you need to know about how much they actually protect the environment. In my view, they are set up to facilitate development, and, given the constitutional division of who's responsible for what, those laws only cover a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance. They cover things like water, threatened species, Ramsar sites and World Heritage, but, interestingly, they do not include the climate. So we have a farcical situation where a massive coalmine, for example, is seeking approval under federal environmental laws, and the climate impacts of that coalmine aren't relevant to the approval decision. The minister is not obliged to even consider the impact on the climate when approving coalmines—and, sadly, she has a track record of approving coalmines, as did the previous environment minister, as has every environment minister since these laws were introduced; I'll come to more detail on that shortly.

We have a ridiculous situation where our environmental laws are not protecting our environment. They are not doing what they say on the tin, and the climate impacts of any large development—whether it's a fossil fuel development or any other development—are simply not considered because they are not considered a matter of national environmental significance. This bill would fix that.

I might add that the government claims to be reviewing our environmental laws at the moment, but it's been a long time coming, folks. We have been waiting and waiting to see this alleged review of the EPBC Act, and we have seen no progress on that. This was an election commitment by the now Labor government to review those laws, with the intention, they say, to strengthen them, but we haven't seen the results of that review. In fact, the whole process of the review, interestingly, has been shrouded in secrecy, with closed-door consultations occurring with selected participants and selected stakeholders. Goodness knows what's going to come out of that process or if we'll see it before the election rolls around.

The government has a chance here today to strengthen our environmental laws and to fix that gaping hole in them that ignores the climate. We have the numbers to pass this bill. The government could be supporting this bill, and they could be delivering on an election promise to strengthen environmental laws. Unfortunately, the government have indicated they don't want to strengthen environmental laws in this way. They don't want the climate impacts of massive coalmines, coal seam projects or other unconventional projects to be protected and considered by our environmental laws, which frankly is devastating to the many people who voted for a change of government, thinking they would get a better environmental outcome from this particular political party. Anyway, the invitation is there for the government to support this bill.

I'm going to go through a little bit about what the bill actually does. This bill would establish a new matter of environmental significance. It would make sure that climate impacts and a particular tonnage of emissions were relevant considerations for the environment minister. It's rather elegantly structured, if I do say so myself, in that it deems a project that will have between 25,000 and 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions to be a significant impact. The plain English explanation is that it ensures that the Minister for the Environment and Water does then assess the impacts of that level of emissions on our natural environment, on nature and on people as part of her role as the environment minister. For those emissions that are under 100,000 tonnes, that project would then be sent through the environmental protection process that our EPBC Act sets up. For anything that emits over 100,000 tonnes, this bill would say that the minister actually has to refuse that. The minister cannot in good conscience and cannot legally approve a project, whether it's a coalmine, a coal seam gas project or what have you, if it's going to have more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions. The minister simply must refuse it. Folk might know that's how we treat nuclear facilities under the EPBC Act. They are prohibited as well. This takes that approach to large emitting projects of over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

I think that's a really useful and sensible approach. It says: 'Look at the impacts on the climate. They're obviously going to be so great. Just say no. Don't even go through the approval process. That is unacceptable for our climate. That is a massive threat to nature, to biodiversity, to our way of life and to our agricultural productivity. Just say no.' That is the structure of the bill.

The bill also requires the Climate Change Authority to develop a national carbon budget and to assess that budget annually. It requires the environment minister to assess projects that go through that assessment process, the 25,000 to 100,000 CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions, against that national carbon budget. This is essentially to make sure that we're not going over our international commitments, which sadly we are. We are emitting far more than we signed up to at the Paris climate conference; many nations are. We are not on track to constrain global heating to a safe level. I will talk more about some really sobering communications from climate scientists and from the World Meteorological Organization shortly. So that's the structure of the bill.

It's 2024, and it is completely outrageous that our environmental laws don't require climate to be considered. Climate change is the biggest threat to our natural world. It is an existential threat to the health of our rivers, to the quality of our forests, to food security, to the survival of wildlife and to the continued peaceful existence of our species on this planet. We are meant to be assessing harmful impacts on the environment, and this is a massive blind spot in our current laws. We desperately need this climate trigger.

Last year alone, in 2023 alone, the environment minister approved five coalmines. The environment minister, the minister for the environment, under a Labor government approved five coalmines. Now, this is when all the world's scientists are saying, 'Stop approving new coal and gas and exit out of existing coal and gas as soon as you practicably can.' So, thanks for nothing, Minister Plibersek—five coalmines approved, and those approvals would cumulatively create almost 150 million tonnes of carbon emissions combined. They are the Isaac River coalmine, the Star coalmine, the Ensham coalmine—which is a big one—the Lake Vermont coalmine and, most recently Gregory Crinum, in my home state of Queensland; that one is approved to operate until 2073, and it would add 31 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, equal to six per cent of Australia's annual emissions.

Emissions under Labor rose by 3.6 million tonnes in 2023. I might add that a record number of threatened species have been added to our threatened species list, even though I thought this government had a 'no new extinctions' policy. And we've had more and more extreme weather events impacting Australians—homes destroyed in floods, wildlife killed in bushfires, people killed in bushfires. Yet the government has never met a coalmine it hasn't wanted to approve.

There's one exception to that, and I expect the politics have quite a lot to do with that. The only coalmine the Albanese government has rejected is Clive Palmer's Central Queensland coal project. That project would have involved the construction of two open-cut pits to extract 10 million tonnes of coal each year, and it was conveniently located just 10 kilometres from the edge of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. So, in that instance, because of the impacts on the reef, the minister was able to reject that coalmine under our existing environmental laws. But we would like to give her the ability and the clear legal pathway to reject other coalmines, other fossil fuel developments and other large developments with that big CO2 equivalent footprint that I went through earlier. So, it's great that the politics saw her refuse one coalmine, but I'm afraid that the five coalmines that have been approved under this government are utterly unacceptable and not at all what the community expects from this government.

I mentioned earlier that the minister is saying she's reviewing our environmental laws but has ruled out supporting a climate trigger, which makes absolutely no sense to me. And the government has pointed to the safeguard mechanism as its sole solution to the climate crisis. Well, it's not enough. We need to consider climate impacts but we need to consider biodiversity impacts as well, and it is right that the climate impacts of developments be considered through the structure and framework of our environmental laws. We cannot rely on the safeguard mechanism alone.

I'd like to point out that the now Prime Minister 20 years ago introduced a bill that would achieve similar outcomes to the one we're proposing today. Mr Anthony Albanese in 2005 introduced a bill to add a climate trigger to our environmental laws—the very same laws that we still have to this day, because they're very old and they're not fit for purpose. So, in 2005 Mr Albanese thought these laws should include climate, and I would like to quote him:

The glaring gap in matters of national environmental significance is climate change. This bill—

his bill—

closes that gap … It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end … We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue.

Well, if we couldn't be complacent 20 years ago we certainly can't waste a single moment now. I would urge the Prime Minister to let his folk in the Senate know that in fact he does want to support a climate trigger in our environmental laws as he said he did 20 years ago. Every time the minister approves a new coal or gas project it makes the climate worse. Every tonne of coal mined and every tree cleared puts Australia's precious environment and communities on the front line of the climate crisis. This bill would close a glaring loophole in our environmental laws, and we are urging everybody in this chamber to support it.

I want to go into some of the details of, sadly, the environmental impact of the climate crisis. We know the climate crisis is caused by the mining and burning of coal and gas, and Australia is doing an awful lot of that—way more than our planet can handle. Our coal and gas exports add more than 1.1 billion tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere every year. Add onto that the half a billion tonnes that we emit domestically, and Australia is one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis in the entire world.

The new coal and gas projects that Labor has in the pipeline would add over 1.7 billion more tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere every year. What all of those new coal and gas projects mean is that Darwin would be uninhabitable from the oppressive heat. The Northern Rivers region and Meanjin, or Brisbane, where I live, would be getting wiped by cyclones moving south, and the Murray-Darling Basin would dry up, destroying communities and our agricultural exports. Australia's coal and gas corporations opening new coal and gas projects and burning it either here or overseas is a matter of international significance and a matter of national environmental significance. So this bill does what the science demands, and what the science demands is no new coal, oil or gas infrastructure being built from now. We need to exit out of our existing infrastructure, but we certainly can't be opening up any new coal, oil or gas mines.

The EU science agency recorded that last year, for a full year, the world's temperatures exceeded 1½ degrees of additional warming. That's what we said collectively, as a planet, we didn't want to go above, and, unfortunately, we have already hit 1½ degrees of warming. Emissions have gone up since this government came to power, and this bill would stop them going up even further. The World Meteorological Organization said that 2023 was the hottest year on record, but global emissions are higher than ever, and they're on track to increase. Coal and gas profits have never been higher either, and their political stranglehold has never been tighter. The head of the WMO has confirmed that the acceleration in the rate of global heating and its impacts have caught even scientists by surprise. The rate of human caused climate change is accelerating, and it's adding to a growing chorus of leading scientists. The World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General said:

Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. It's a deafening cacophony of broken records.

We can fix this trajectory. We need to fix our broken environmental laws and ensure that the climate impacts of new fossil fuel projects are taken into account and that large new coal and gas must be refused by the so-called environment minister.