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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to climate change policy.

I note that Senator Rice, who is dialling in remotely, would like to make the take-note contribution.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] We are in a climate emergency. The UN Secretary-General said this week that it is 'code red'. This is completely consistent with Greta Thunberg's words that we should be acting 'as if our house is on fire, because it is'. But what response did we get from Senator Birmingham this afternoon? From the government, basically it's: 'Don't worry. It's just a little fire in the kitchen. Don't worry. We'll get on to it at some stage. Eventually we'll get the fire extinguisher out, or perhaps some other technology.'

'We're meeting our Paris targets,' says Senator Birmingham, whereas in fact our pollution from burning fossil fuels has increased by six per cent between 2005 and 2019. Even if we do meet our Paris targets, it's like saying, 'We put the high jump bar just a couple of centimetres above the ground five years ago, and now we're celebrating. Oh, look: we got over it.' Basically our target translates to almost three degrees of global warming if that were what the rest of the world was agreeing to as well, which would make the extreme weather that we have been seeing in recent times just the beginning.

Meeting our Paris targets, even if we do meet them, is not where the global focus is now. This is an emergency, and other countries are recognising it. The US have recognised it. They have now got a commitment to slash their carbon pollution by 50 per cent by 2030. The EU recognise it. They are going to be slashing their carbon pollution by 50 per cent by 2030. The UK will slash their carbon pollution by over 60 per cent by 2030. We in Australia need to triple our ambition to be consistent with the science and with what the IPCC has laid out so starkly for us this week. We need to be slashing our pollution. We need to have reductions of 75 per cent by 2030 if we are going to be doing our part to keep global heating below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The Morrison government's refusal to act on climate leaves Australia isolated on the world stage. It's us, it's Saudi Arabia and it's Russia. No-one is being fooled, least of all our allies. The US, just this week, has publicly rebuked Australia's climate policy. It was an unprecedented public rebuke. Think how strong the private critiques must be if this is what they are willing to say publicly. One of their key negotiators, Dr Pershing, said, 'The commitments they made in Paris are not sufficient.' So, for all that Senator Birmingham can blather on about technology, the fact is that we are burning coal, gas and oil at unprecedented rates and the rest of the world, including our allies, are not impressed.

But no. We have a government basically hell-bent on looking after their billionaire mates and their fossil fuel donors, setting fire to our future rather than facing the facts. You only have to look at the subsidies going out the door for the mining and burning of fossil fuels: over $10 billion a year, including committing to spend $600 million for the Kurri Kurri gas plant and over $200 million to support and subsidise the fracking of the Beetaloo Basin, releasing an absolute climate bomb on the world.

The government are failing in their most basic duty of keeping us safe. They are burning our children's futures. So we have to take serious action. The IPCC report laid it out very starkly: the alarm bells are ringing. The UN Secretary-General said that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. The temperatures are rising, the ice is melting, the oceans are rising, the reef is dying and the forests are burning. It was 48.8 degrees in Sicily yesterday. The fires around the world—in Greece, in Russia, in the US and in Canada—on the back of our Black Summer fires show this is the emergency that we are in.

We've got to take action. There is hope. We can kick out this destructive, planet-burning mob and have a government with the Greens in balance of power. The Greens will push the next government to go further and faster on climate. We can adopt science based targets for 2030; we can shift to abundant green energy; we can stop the mining, burning and export of coal, gas and oil; and we can work with other countries around the world for a positive, healthy future.

Question agreed to.