Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia bills—the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024. A future made in Australia must be built on the clean, green industries of the future. It cannot build a future for coal, oil and gas. The science is clear: we can't open any new fossil fuel projects if we want to limit our global heating to 1.5 degrees. What Labor is doing here is creating a future made in Australia that is actually one that offers an expansion for coal, oil and gas past 2050. The government's dangerous Future Gas Strategy can be delivered through this Future Made in Australia legislation, hastening the expansion of fossil fuels and accelerating the collapse of our climate system.

While the Greens support positive government intervention in our economy and a strong industry policy that offers good-quality jobs, we have real concerns about what's on offer with these bills. These bills would establish a framework to inject more than $22 billion of capital over the next decade, aiming to capitalise on a clean energy transition. Labor talks about these bills as a way to maximise the economic and industrial benefits of the move to a net zero emission economy and to secure Australia's place as an indispensable part of the changing global landscape. However, in truth, under these bills, there are no limitations on what will be funded by Treasury or Export Finance Australia as necessary to advance our economic security and resilience. This is a very wide definition. This could mean manufacturing weapons to send into occupied territories and war zones. It could finance the building of import LNG regasification terminals in developing countries so that they can become hooked on Australian gas. It could mean kickstarting a petrochemical industry that locks in dependency on new gas fields for decades to come. It could become an election slash fund for more coal and gas. Public funding to expand the coal, oil and gas industries cannot be supported in the middle of a climate crisis.

Another issue with the Future Made in Australia bills is the composition of the seven-person industrial decarbonisation and green metals advisory panel. The government advisory panel consists of some worker representatives as well as mining lobby heads, such as Rebecca Tomkinson from the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia, Mark Kane at the Australian Steel Institute and the Australian Aluminium Council's Marghanita Johnson. And then there is Mr Paul Howes.

Mr Howes was previously, of course, a union official; however, he is now the national managing partner of consulting at KPMG, the second most powerful partner behind CEO Andrew Yates, the very same Paul Howes who recently told the KPMG workforce that he is planning to half KPMG's consulting work by 2026 by shifting jobs offshore to lower-cost work hubs based in Australia and overseas. I'm not sure how Mr Howes's approach at KPMG aligns with the goal of a future made in Australia that creates and protects onshore manufacturing jobs. Paul Howes, recruited to its advisory structures, is an architect of a future not made in Australia. It greatly concerns me that there is a managing partner of KPMG on this honeypot advisory committee, with all his consultancy firm's revenue goals, history of 'land and expand', and aggressive 'opportunity mapping', which this Senate has exposed over the past 12 months through the course of its current inquiries. Mr Howes won't need a map; he's been given the keys to the front door of the Future Made in Australia, when he has a personal track record of a future for KPMG that is not made in Australia.

Along with giving jobs to consulting mates, Labor is at the beck and call of the coal and gas cartel. Labor took hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations from Chevron, INPEX, the Minerals Council of Australia, Santos and Woodside in the 2022-23 financial year alone. In turn, Labor is spending almost $50 billion in coal, oil and gas subsidies over the forward estimates, turbocharging climate destruction. Labor has approved at least 23 coal and gas projects in a climate crisis. Is it any wonder that Labor's pathetically weak climate agenda is actually seeing emissions go up?

For anyone out there watching, we are not solving the climate crisis. Many Australians voted for us to do exactly that in this current parliament, and we are letting them down. Labor is letting them down with this bill. The Future Gas Strategy, which appears inherently linked to Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda, has a great big dream—a great big fantasy—underpinning it. That is the dream and fantasy of opening up the Beetaloo basin, as well as Scarborough and Browse, and of fracking the Kimberley, Perth and Surat basins. That's the dream. That's the fantasy of a future gas strategy which is enabled by Labor's Future Made in Australia legislation. And that is all wrong. It betrays the safe future of our kids, our region and our planet.

Labor's Future Gas Strategy was almost universally condemned by environmental and climate groups. It's been labelled as a revival of Scott Morrison's 'gas-led recovery' plan. Despite gas being as dirty as coal, Anthony Albanese is as captured by the gas corporations as Scott Morrison was, having already given eight new gas approvals since coming to power.

The Greens will continue to fight the government's Future Gas Strategy and their push for more coal and gas. With Labor and the Liberals now backing more coal and gas past 2050, we in the Greens are fighting for real climate action. It is possible to stop this addiction to coal, oil and gas; if we truly want a future for our kids and our planet, then we must.

My home state of South Australia is aiming for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2027. We lead the world in the integration of wind and solar power. Currently, South Australia generates more than 70 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources and almost one in two households have solar panels installed. People are on the job; they get it, and they want a safe future for their kids. We've got the first power system in the world where rooftop solar can sometimes exceed the entire state's electricity demand. This is something to be incredibly proud of and the kind of future that Australia and the Greens want.

Right now, our future is jeopardised by climate change and it's undeniable that our planet is in trouble. We're witnessing the consequences of human-made climate change around the world, in our region and in our own country. We're no longer in the era of global warming but are in global boiling, in too many places, and 2023 was the warmest year in recorded history. We're paying a big price for treating our environment and our climate as mere fuel for our economy.

I'm here in the Senate today because of the evidence in successive IPCC reports and because I've listened to the scientists studying climate change. We need to directly address and tightly target that climate crisis with strong industry policy and quality jobs that make the difference. I'm here in the Senate so that I can look those future generations in the eye and say, 'I did everything I could.' We know the solutions to climate change; we've got the tools we need to implement them. We have to invest. We have to have the right industry policy to move in the right direction.

I recently met with the Safe Climate, Equal Future delegation visiting this parliament, with members from the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, the Kimberley and Kununurra. Thank you to Tanya, Grace, Eduardo and Peter, who shared their stories. They've all been personally impacted by climate induced disasters, like rising sea levels, typhoons, heatwaves and changing weather cycles. They showed me photos of the destruction of their homes and their communities. For them, climate destruction is here now. I heard their clear message that, despite these communities contributing the least to global emissions, they are at the front line of the climate crisis.

Our First Nations communities are clear, our Pacific neighbours are clear, the UN is clear and the science is clear. We have to stop opening new coal and gas fields, and we have to act on climate change. Investment in our industries and our industry policy must be aligned to that future. We've got to put the future of our kids before the interests of a small group of fossil fuel profiteers, mostly foreign owned, who are paying too little in taxes and are determined to wring their last fortunes out of extraction while putting our futures at risk. We must not subsidise that extraction. We've got to restore confidence in our democracy by excluding fossil fuel money from politics and rooting out corruption.

When I think of Australia's future, I want a future that all our kids can comfortably live in and I want them to have the same opportunities we did. There can be no doubt that fossil fuel expansion puts the climate, our future and our frontline communities at risk. The jobs of the future are in renewable economies and industries. We need urgent transition out of fossil fuels and into renewables, and that's what industry policy should be delivering. We support government setting an agenda and investment and investment incentives that give that direction to our economy. We've got real concerns that, hidden within this framework and this bill, a future made in Australia's actually a dangerous future of coal, oil and gas beyond 2050.

The Greens made nine recommendations in our dissenting report to these bills. We want the government to redirect billions in federal subsidies for the proposed Middle Arm gas and petrochemical precinct to support clean industries instead. We want the government to guarantee that public investment won't go to coal, oil and gas projects or infrastructure in other sectors that would lock in long-term dependency on fossil fuels, and we want the government to stop approving new coal and gas projects. That is what our regions and our workers in fossil fuel industries are looking for—an active industry policy to accelerate our transition to a clean energy future and a safe planet.

We want the government to end the fuel tax credit scheme for mining projects. We want the government to make the electrification of homes and businesses a priority. We want the government to use industrial policy to invest capital in manufacturing and processing jobs in Australia and to not keep on exporting our wealth overseas and damaging our planet. We want the government to better define and expand 'community benefit principles' to ensure that First Nations people benefit from the projects delivered under Future Made in Australia that protects our planet's future.

The Australian Greens support government intervention in our economy, and we want strong industry policy that drives public and private funds into productive parts of our economy. We need that strong policy, and we need the quality jobs that will come from it. But we need to do it in ways that ensure and protect a habitable planet where the climate's not breaking down around us and ecological collapse has been averted. We need intervention in the market to make it work in the interests of people, nature and climate, as well as the jobs and the industries of the future. We need to stop new coal, oil and gas if we're to preserve a liveable planet and a future for our kids.