David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

In respect of the government response to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee report into the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023, I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I was very grateful to the Senate for supporting an inquiry into my first private senator's bill, which seeks to establish a duty of care and protect young people and future generations from climate harm. I would like to extend my thanks to everyone who was involved in the inquiry. Thank you to the 43 people who gave evidence at the public hearing. Doctors, nurses, young people, scientists and lawyers all clearly articulated just how this bill would help protect children and future generations. Thank you to the 403 organisations and members of our community who took the time to write a submission to the inquiry, and thank you to the hundreds of people who wrote to the committee in support of the bill. Thank you to the 25,000 people who signed a petition in support of this bill, and thank you to the committee secretariat for the huge amount of work that went into this inquiry.

I would have liked to thank the government for the response to the committee report, but I can't. In fact, it's probably another contender for this government's 'Weak as Piss' award. It's a two-page dismissal of the thousands of pages of submissions and the hundreds of people and organisations who supported this bill. It's a two-page dismissal of young people who are saying, 'Our futures matter.' When we saw the coalition, when they were in government, argue that they did not in fact have a duty of care to young people, we thought Labor would do better. But we were sorely mistaken.

Of the 403 submissions, just one opposed the bill outright—the Institute of Public Affairs, the think tank that has awarded Gina Rinehart an honorary life membership and has peddled climate change denial for the past several decades here in Australia. What we have here is the government siding with the IPA rather than listening to experts, academics, doctors and even unions. More than that, it's the government siding with the IPA ahead of the young Australians and their parents who are calling for our future to be protected.

In this critical decade, the disrespect the government shows to young Australians and their parents is astonishing. The disrespect does not end there. This response shows a lack of respect for the Senate. Procedural resolution 44(3) of the Senate requires the government to respond to recommendations contained in minority reports. My dissenting report has two recommendations. The government responded to neither.

The response only adds to the long list of ways this government has failed to tackle the root causes of some of the big issues we face. Instead of acting to protect children and future generations, Labor has approved over 30 new or expanded coal and gas projects since taking office. This is a complete betrayal of the young people we should have a duty to protect—and the government know it. They know it. Go on their social media. There's nothing when they approve a fossil fuel project. When they approve a renewables project or knock back a fossil fuel project, there are posts—lots of Instagram posts telling the world how great they are on climate. On the one hand, they want to talk about the transition; on the other hand, they want to continue expanding the fossil fuel industry, against all expert evidence and advice, and beyond that—against the pleading of climate scientists, who've studied this their whole life and are saying: 'We are heading towards disaster.'

Our current path leads us towards and past three degrees of warming by the end of the century. For most people in this Senate, that's just a date in the future when we won't be around. But for a young person born today, that will be their old age; that'll be the life of their children and their grandchildren.

I find it really hard to cop that we have two major parties in Australia that believe that they do not have a duty of care to young people on climate—the issue that future generations will look back and judge us on. You don't have the moral courage to actually stand up against fossil fuel companies and against some in the media who have shares in fossil fuel companies, and you bow to them and you still take their donations.

We owe our children and our grandchildren far better than this. On our current trajectory, we'll be saying goodbye to the Great Barrier Reef, parts of northern Australia will become uninhabitable and our cities will become heat sinks. This is not alarmist; this is what the experts are telling us.

And yet Labor is pretty happy to keep heading in that direction. They've got all the talking points about the transition, to be sure, and they're better than the coalition on genuinely heading towards the transition, but they are not willing to let go of fossil fuels; they're not willing to get on with a genuine transition where we actually use the fossil fuels we have while we transition to renewables. They're wanting to expand them, and they're saying to Woodside and Santos: 'What do you need from us? Do you need legislation? Here's the sea dumping bill.' It's disgraceful. It is so disgraceful. And future generations and young people are going to judge us.

So I'd say to the Senate: which side of history do you want to be on when we have an opportunity to legislate a duty of care to young people? We can no longer say to them, 'Everything's going to be okay.' But what we can say to them is: 'We're going to do everything we can from here on in, here in Australia, and then show international leadership.'

We owe our young people a duty of care. I want to thank the many young people who have put so much time and effort into the campaign to have a duty of care—to have a government that actually says: 'Your future is important to us, and, beyond just saying it, we're actually going to set this up in legislation where we have to consider the impacts on you.' Thank you to all you young people out there who've got involved, who've raised your voice, who've come to parliament and who've met with parliamentarians across the political spectrum, and thank you to the many parliamentarians who have met with them.

I see it as totally inevitable that, at some point in the future, we'll have a parliament that actually recognises this. Clearly, we do not at the moment, with this duopoly running the show. But that's going to change, and I would urge young people not to lose heart. There is much to do, yes, but keep staying involved. Keep pushing your local representative. And, if you are 18 or over at this election, actually find someone who doesn't just believe that they have a duty of care but is willing to actually put that into our laws and hold decision-makers to that.