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

The Australian Greens are supportive of the intent of the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. We're currently working through some of the details associated with this legislation with the government. The intent of this bill is to encourage investment in renewable hydrogen and critical minerals and expand the remit of Indigenous Business Australia. Decisive action to tackle climate change and a rapid transition to renewables are critical. They're critical not just in the fight against climate breakdown but also in terms of the opportunities they provide for this country. We welcome in-principle government support for truly sustainable and green energy industries, and we acknowledge that such government support is an important part of achieving the rapid decarbonisation that we need to achieve in Australia and indeed around the world.

The urgent need for a clean energy transition presents a unique opportunity for this country. We've got an opportunity to become a renewable energy superpower, a global leader in renewable energy and a global leader in decarbonisation. Schemes like the tax credits proposed in this legislation are really important to create market confidence and to encourage the investment that we need to see in Australia in order for us to become a true renewable energy superpower at a global level. We're very well positioned to achieve that aim, but we need to make sure the right settings are put in place. We need to make sure that those settings unblock global bottlenecks on the resources that are needed for national and global decarbonisation. Inputs like renewable hydrogen and critical minerals will undoubtedly be a key part of that. They have great potential to contribute significantly to Australia's economy and to contribute significantly to new jobs that can be created in the transition out of fossil fuels and into renewable energies and electrification.

Doing this properly would mean that we can transform our economy from an overreliance on old methods of generating power, old energy grids and old industry sectors. As we go through that transition, we can support workers and their communities at the same time as we take strong action on climate change and to protect our environment. So, for those reasons, the Greens welcome government support for realising Australia's global renewable potential. We hope that the government will continue to engage constructively with us to ensure better outcomes for the climate.

I do want to be clear though that, while investment in, and more certainty around, renewables is important, it is only one part of the puzzle. Polluting projects have to be phased out. Polluting technologies have to be phased out. But we see time after time that Labor is in thrall to the fossil fuel corporations. Make no mistake—just like the LNP, the Labor Party is at the beck and call of giant fossil fuel corporations. These corporations donate millions of dollars every year into the coffers of not just the Liberal and National parties but also the Labor Party in Australia. The Labor Party and the Liberal and National parties join together to deliver the outcomes that those giant fossil fuel corporations demand of them. At times, this chamber seems more like the board room of a coal or gas corporation than it does the upper house of the Australian parliament.

Under Labor, emissions are up in Australia. Let's be clear about that. Since Labor came to power nearly three years ago, with a much vaunted set of policies—according to them—to address climate change, emissions have gone up in Australia. Not only have emissions gone up; Labor has approved 32 new coal and gas projects since coming into power. This is at a time when the science is clear, at a time when the head of the United Nations is clear, at a time when we see climate-driven disaster after disaster around the world, at a time when millions of people are being displaced from their homes, at a time when many thousands are dying—we have seen the bushfires in North America—and at a time when, if you can't understand that our climate is breaking down and ecologies are collapsing around us, you are simply not paying attention. At these times, Labor has approved 32 new coal and gas projects in less than three years. Hand over fist, they are bowing down to their corporate masters in the fossil fuel sector. Since Labor came to power, emissions have gone up, and 32 new coal and gas projects have been approved. Labor has committed to a future for gas beyond 2050 in their Future Gas Strategy, which was written for them by their corporate masters in the gas sector and faithfully delivered by the supplicant Labor government in this place.

Billions of taxpayer dollars continue to be poured into sustaining coal and gas—including, for example, funding for the Middle Arm project. All this has gone on while the climate breaks down and the planet continues to heat. As a result, our economy, our environment and our people are at risk. We've already shot past 1.5 degrees of warming in Australia, and the world is on track for a catastrophic three degrees of warming. Extreme weather continues to devastate communities, from the floods in northern Queensland that are still posing problems to many people to the fires currently burning in my home state of Tasmania. We saw the winter wildfires just recently in California in the United States.

I want to say a little bit about the fires currently burning in my home state of Tasmania. There is a grove of huon pines that the Meredith Range fire has burned right up to within the last 24 to 48 hours. That grove of huon pines contains the largest known and recorded huon pine in Tasmania. Some senators will recall that we had a Senate inquiry subsequent to the catastrophic 2016 fires which destroyed so much of the globally significant ecological communities in Tasmania, including pencil pines and other fragile alpine ecosystems. Some of the recommendations of that inquiry included more work being done to understand the behaviour of fire in certain ecosystem types and significantly more resources being allocated by both the Commonwealth and the Tasmanian government to things like remote-area firefighting capacity and aerial bombing. I want to place on the record that those recommendations have not in their entirety been complied with by the Tasmanian and Australian governments. As a result, precious ecosystems are currently being threatened by fires in many Tasmanian wilderness areas.

I want to place on the record the Greens' thanks to people who are fighting a number of fires currently burning in Tasmania. We acknowledge the risk and the danger that are posed to people who fight fires, particularly in remote areas which obviously often entail very difficult terrain, either for access or for on-the-ground operations. In some terrain, we acknowledge that getting boots on the ground is somewhere between very difficult and impossible to achieve. But we need to make sure that the Tasmanian government is providing our firefighters with adequate resources and that the Tasmanian government is ensuring that the protection of natural and ecological values is considered as fire management decisions and decisions around how to respond to fires, which fires to respond to and how many assets to commit to any particular fire are being made.

Some of the ecological community is at risk now. I acknowledge the cold change that went through last night, which provides us with an opportunity now to ensure that we do the work necessary to protect ecologically critical areas as well as, obviously, built infrastructure and human life. There is now an opportunity to do that work that can protect them for when the weather inevitably changes and fire risk, and the risk of fires spreading, increases.

So we now have a scenario where we are seeing the impacts of climate change and we have a government that is in thrall to the fossil fuel industry. Let me make a very confident prediction to Labor, Liberal and National senators sitting in this place: history is not going to regard what you're doing now well. You are on the wrong side of history by being in thrall to fossil fuel corporations, by continuing to devastate our native forests and by continuing to approve coal and gas projects. The two major parties are in absolute lockstep. There's not a wafer of difference between them on support for fossil fuel corporations and on approvals for new coal and gas projects and for destroying our native forests. There is not a shred of difference between the two major parties, and you will be recorded by history as abrogating your responsibilities not just to the climate and nature but to the Australian people and, in fact, people all around the world. The verdict of history will be savage on you, and you will be found to be comprehensively on the wrong side of history.

You cannot keep approving new coal and gas projects while our climate is breaking down around us. You cannot sit idly by and watch emissions continue to go up. You cannot continue to destroy our precious and beautiful globally significant, carbon-rich, biodiversity-rich native forests in the middle of a climate crisis and expect history to view you kindly. That is not going to happen. You will be viewed savagely and harshly when the history of these times is written. You will be viewed savagely and harshly because you destroy our native forests, because you are in thrall to big coal and gas corporations and because you continue to approve new coal and gas projects—32 new coal and gas projects in less than three years since Labor came into government. History will judge you for what you are: climate criminals and destroyers of nature at a time in global history when we need people to protect nature and to actually go in and deliver strong, urgent climate action. That's what we need, not supplicant behaviour to the giant fossil fuel corporations and the native forest loggers.