Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about Labor's Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. Like my colleague Senator Waters, who spoke before me, I had significant hope that this bill would be an investment in manufacturing in this country, an overdue, positive investment into manufacturing, but, as it stands, this bill would potentially be an environmental disaster. We're in a climate emergency right now. At a time when we should be rapidly phasing out of fossil fuels, this government, via this bill, could potentially be propping them up with even more public money.

Right across the country, we are seeing an increasingly unstable climate. We're seeing more unseasonable heat and damaging winds. We're seeing more people displaced by extreme weather events, such as floodings and bushfires. My state of Victoria has recently been hit by devastating weather events, including intense bushfires in Mallacoota, storms akin to minicyclones in parts of Gippsland and droughts in the south-west, where farmers are seeing the lowest rainfalls on record. While communities across Australia are bearing the brunt of the impacts of climate change, the Albanese government is taking millions in donations from fossil fuel billionaires and corporations, choosing profits over our precious environment.

As we all know, the biggest cause of global warming is the mining, transporting and burning of fossil fuels—that is, coal, oil and gas. Scientists agree that the phasing out of fossil fuels is the No. 1 task to halt our planet from cooking and that there can be no new coal or gas projects if we are to avoid environmental collapse, yet, instead of embracing a clean future, Labor has approved 28 new coal and gas projects. Instead of using this bill as an opportunity to lean into Australia's massive potential as a renewable energy superpower and to transition our economy to one that is clean and green, Labor potentially presents us with a future for more publicly funded coal and gas projects.

This is a government with complete disregard for our young people, for species that are careening towards extinction and for communities, including First Nations people, right across our country that are grappling with the lived reality of increased climate impacts every single day. Labor must wake up to the reality of the climate crisis and wake up to the reality that the government is responsible for its climate inaction. As Jo Dodds, President of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, a movement that grew from the ashes of climate fuelled bushfires, puts it:

Any government that knows what we have been through and continues to suggest that there's no need for urgent action should be held directly responsible for the next fire. It is their job to ensure the safety of our communities, their job to represent OUR interests against those of the fossil fuel industries that are driving the majority of the climate destruction. Any government which does not prioritise the people, our homes and livelihoods, our food production and livestock, any government that ignores our security from the biggest threat our communities will ever face, should be held accountable.

The Future Made in Australia policy—let's be very clear—will not, in its current form, help to tackle the climate crisis, because, simply, it opens the doors for more coal, oil and gas. The Albanese government has made clear its intention to pursue its Future Gas Strategy, which includes a role for gas in our domestic and export economies. New coal projects have been approved by the environment minister beyond 2070, and the resources minister has opened up 46,758 square kilometres of ocean to new gas fields. From the Browse project, on Scott Reef, and the Beetaloo carbon bomb, in the Northern Territory, to the drilling off the Victorian coast, our environment and climate are under threat from Labor.

Less than 24 hours after communities right across western Victoria celebrated their hard fought win in their campaign to stop the monster TGS seismic-blasting project in the Otway Basin, Labor approved two new gas production licences in the very same region. The Albanese government has committed $1.5 billion to develop common-use infrastructure at Middle Arm. US gas company Tamboran, which previously received public funding as a consequence of the coalition and Labor Party voting together to protect the Beetaloo Cooperative Drilling Program, has exclusive rights to build a 6.6-million-tonne gas export terminal at the site.