Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by Senator Birmingham to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to climate change.

I asked about climate ambition and targets, noting President-elect Biden of the US has committed to 100 per cent clean electricity by 2035 and has also, rightly, noted that the climate emergency is an existential threat upon which we have no time to lose.

I put those statements to the new Leader of the Government in the Senate, and I pointed out that now we are essentially friendless, and the only friends we do have in the climate arena, internationally, are petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Russia, and Brazil for that matter. This is an opportunity for the government to rethink its pathetically low 2030 targets. It's an opportunity for the opposition to decide upon its 2030 targets and announce that. We have a clear signal of a change in direction from one of the most influential global actors in this space. This is a perfect opportunity for a reframe.

Unfortunately, we didn't hear any of that evidence today. In fact, we heard more of the same sort of self-congratulatory gumph that we've come to expect from this climate-denying government. They trotted out all that trope that we met and beat our Kyoto 1 targets. I hope people remember that our commitment under Kyoto 1 was an increase on our admissions of eight per cent. I'm not terribly impressed that we managed to increase our emissions by eight per cent, and that certainly should not be trumpeted as some great achievement by this nation. We then heard the same old trope that we're going to do okay in our second round of targets—not mentioning that that's because we are using carryover credits, which most other countries have said they will voluntarily not use. So the absolute spin, from this government, on climate doesn't fool anyone who's paying attention and they know how close this government is to the coal, gas and oil sector. They know how much money flows in political donations to both sides of politics, and they know just how weak this government is on climate.

I pointed out that the government's pathetic targets have us on track for four degrees of warming in Australia, which the CSIRO and BoM have confirmed will have devastating impacts on this nation. We have had a terrible year but people won't forget that it started off with the worst, historically, destructive bushfires this nation has ever seen. The climate crisis hasn't gone away just because we've been in a health crisis and a deepening economic crisis. It's still there. The good news is we can fight our way out of the health crisis and the economic crisis by taking action on the climate crisis, by investing in publicly owned clean, renewable energy. It will create jobs. It could start off our domestic manufacturing sector again. We can—I shouldn't say kill two birds with one stone; I'd get cranky emails about that—achieve multiple goals with sensible policies that aren't simply in hock to big oil, big coal and big gas.

Sadly, Senator Birmingham didn't even answer my question about whether the government would lift Australia's targets for 2030 at the next climate summit. That was the expectation in Paris, that people would make an initial commitment and revisit that target with an intention, an encouragement, to increase it. We got no such indication at all out of this government. I then mentioned that the commitment to 100 per cent clean energy by 2035, by the President-elect, was something Australia could consider following suit on. The Greens think that we in Australia could get there by 2030. We think the technology is there for that transition to be done in a way that leaves no-one behind and, in fact, reduces power prices. We didn't get an answer on that either. We got some lecture about how the road map is apparently consistent, which it is flagrantly not.

In the last part of my question I mentioned that former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described on the weekend the government's gas-led recovery as 'BS' and 'political piffle'. I thought that was somewhat awkward for that side of politics. But again we got the general waffle about how bloody great gas is. There was an assertion made by Senator Birmingham that our emissions are reducing, completely glossing over the fact that gas emissions have sky rocketed. We know from previous studies that gas is virtually as dirty as coal when it comes to the climate. We do not need a gas-led recovery. That is a nonsense. What we need is strong investment in clean energy and in things like public housing and schools and hospitals to tackle the climate crisis and create jobs. But we're not seeing that from this government, are we? (Timeexpired)

Question agreed to.