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

While global heating is spiralling past 1.5 degrees and while ecosystems are literally crumbling around us, here we have the Liberal Party engaged in a race to the bottom to undermine our already pathetically weak environment laws in Australia. Let's be very clear about the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—it does not do what it says on the tin. It claims to be about protecting our environment, but what it actually does is facilitate the destruction of nature. It facilitates the undermining of biodiversity. It does that because it was designed to be a fast track for environmentally destructive approvals. It was never designed to be a piece of legislation that protected our environment. That's why it was so disappointing when Labor kowtowed to the fossil fuel industry and refused to progress its so-called nature-positive laws, which were not anywhere near sufficient to fix our broken environment laws.

But Labor wouldn't even progress their weak attempt to fix our weak environment laws, because they got their riding orders from the giant fossil fuel corporations who, remember, are making obscene profits and whose CEOs are making multimillion dollar salary packages by cooking our planet. What that means is they are making obscene profits and their CEOs are making multimillion dollar salary packages by engaging an action that will actually result in large numbers of people dying, even greater numbers of people being displaced from their homes, famine, war and a massive civilisational upheaval that humanity will face as we move through the decades of this century. Instead of actually taking action in the public interest, we have Labor kowtowing to the fossil fuel sector and refusing to progress reforms to fix our broken environment laws and the Liberals coming in here today moving to undermine our already pathetically weak environment laws.

This is a race to the bottom. It is dangerous for humanity. It is absolutely catastrophic for our ecosystems, for that beautiful, complex web of life that actually underpins human survival on this planet. History will view the Labor and Liberal parties very harshly—and rightly so. History will also laud those of us—for example, in the Greens—who are standing up and fighting against what is happening in here. This collaboration, this collusion between Labor and Liberal, to refuse to fix our environment laws and to actually actively undermine them and prevent them from even having an opportunity to do what it claims that they do in the name of the legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, is active collusion and it is against the interests of humanity. We need to understand this because we need to name it and we need to call it out. When you are facing this kind of collusion, this kind of abrogation—