Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Sport (Senator Lundy) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to climate change.

President Obama last night made a major speech on climate change. Everyone has been waiting for this speech because he has on several occasions referred to the action he will take on climate change, and people have been waiting for him to make this a legacy issue. As we all know, he has not been able to get emissions trading through the parliamentary processes in the United States and so the upshot of this is his major speech.

In that speech, he made a few points which are extremely relevant to Australia. The first is in relation to the Keystone pipeline. He said that he would have to take into account in determining whether to approve that pipeline whether it is in the national interest to do so, because it would not be in the national interest if it exacerbated carbon pollution. When I asked Minister Lundy today whether it is in Australia's national interest to exacerbate carbon pollution, in particular in relation to the Galilee and Bowen basins and extraction of coal, Minister Lundy really insulted the intelligence of everyone campaigning on global warming by suggesting that in fact the fugitive emissions from coal in Australia were small and therefore this was not a problem. It is a major problem. It is estimated that the coal extracted from the Galilee Basin will be of such volume that if it was a separate country it would be the world's seventh largest emitter. If ever there was a project that exacerbates carbon pollution in a global context, it is the Galilee Basin. If you take seriously the notion that it is not in the national interest to exacerbate climate change by approving projects that do, you would be immediately out there opposing the Galilee and Bowen basins and any new coal projects and expanded coal mines and coal projects. They are built for export. Australia is actually pushing global pollution on the rest of the world by expanding its coal exports.

Secondly, President Obama made very clear that it has to stop: giving tax breaks to the big oil companies in the United States, which he recognised as some of the wealthiest companies in the world. That is why I asked the minister: when are we going to stop giving tax breaks to the big fossil fuel companies in Australia? In fact, we spend $2 billion every year in fuel tax credits to the big miners alone. That is a fossil fuel subsidy.

In November next year we are hosting the G20, in Brisbane. Under former Prime Minister Rudd we have already signed up with President Obama to cut fossil fuel subsidies. And what have we seen? No, not a cut in fossil fuel subsidies but in fact a refusal to cut fossil fuel subsidies and a refusal to stop giving $2 billion a year to the big miners and instead taking the money out of the pockets of single parents, refusing to increase Newstart and now cutting university funding by $2.3 billion. So you would rather give a fossil fuel subsidy to the big miners, 80 per cent of whose shareholders are overseas, whose overwhelming shareholder value and profit goes out of the country, and rather than support our own universities you come back and say, 'We are going to slash universities rather than end fossil fuel subsidies.'

So what was the value of then Prime Minister Rudd signing on the line with President Obama to cut fossil fuel subsidies? At the time Treasury indicated there were 17 fossil fuel subsidies in Australia. But, guess what? They changed the language and decided they were only going to end 'inefficient' fossil fuel subsidies, and, hooray, Australia does not have any inefficient fuel subsidies, so the need to get rid of them was over. Those are the kinds of semantics that are betraying the climate. That is why this generation is now suffering extreme weather events. Whenever I hears speeches from the coalition talking about the costs of action on climate change to address it, we never hear about the costs in terms of the deaths and infrastructure destruction because of more extreme weather events and the intensity of those weather events. It has already cost us billions in Queensland after the flooding there after Cyclone Yasi, not the mention the fires, the heatwaves and all of the other major events. The Climate Commission has just come out recently saying it is going to get worse. The government needs to stop increasing coal exports. (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Milne be agreed to.

Question agreed to.