Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, the lickspittles to the fossil fuel corporations are on full view in this place today. The slaves, the sycophants and the puppets to the big fossil fuel corporations come in here to do the bidding of their corporate political donors. Those millions of dollars that flow into the coffers of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party from big fossil fuel corporations are sure paying off in spades today. We are seeing people come in here and run the lines for the big fossil fuel corporations, which are run by the psychopaths of CEOs who prioritise cooking the planet, and their own personal profiteering and greed, over the future of every living thing on this earth.

It's appropriate to reflect that it's not just in the Senate where people come in and say the quiet things out loud; it's also what goes on behind the scenes in this place. We know from multiple reports last night that the Prime Minister, acting at the behest of the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council, the big polluters, the loggers, the miners and the fossil fuel corporations, has scuppered his own environment minister's attempts to get up a bill that would have at least in some small way improved the situation for our environment. Once again, we are seeing big corporate power and influence—the big polluters—get a win over nature, the environment and climate action.

We are living in a petro state. We are living in a nation where the boardroom of the Business Council of Australia is effectively the third chamber of this parliament—but it wields its power with no accountability, no responsibility and no obligation to the Australian people. The Prime Minister has literally just stomped all over his own environment minister because that's what the big corporate polluters, the miners, the loggers and the fossil fuel corporations told him to do. You know what they call this in a lot of other countries? They call it corruption. Here in Australia, it shows that the big corporate interests, their greed and their profiteering, are what really matters to most people in this place rather than the interests of the people we are put in here to represent, of nature, of climate action and of every living thing on this planet.

The Western Australian government, as we know, is poised to approve Woodside's North West Shelf extension—a massive project that will burn toxic, polluting, planet-cooking gas up to 2070. Minister Plibersek has the authority and the moral responsibility to intervene in that matter, just as she does to intervene to save the maugean skate—an ancient species; there are only about 120 left on the face of the planet—in Tasmania's Macquarie Harbour. And what does Labor do? It parachutes in an announcement from the Prime Minister of $28 million in order to prop up Senator Urquhart's campaign to win the seat of Braddon at the next federal election. That is also, in a lot of countries, what would qualify as corruption. Labor should never have done that ahead of the scientific studies that are still not due for over 12 months.