Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that the President has received the following letter, dated 21 November 2022, from Senator McKim:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today the Australian Greens propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That Vanuatu's Climate Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, would only back Australia's bid to host the 2026 COP if Australia doesn't commit to any new coal or gas handouts, yet Labor's first budget has $1.9 billion to open up a new LNG terminal and petrochemical hub in Darwin Harbour"

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

The Deputy:

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That Vanuatu's Climate Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, would only back Australia's bid to host the 2026 COP if Australia doesn't commit to any new coal or gas handouts, yet Labor's first budget has $1.9 billion to open up a new LNG terminal and petrochemical hub in Darwin Harbour.

Here we have a government who wants to host a climate conference on the one hand but is actively giving billions of dollars to projects that will wreck our climate on the other. In fact, you can't have it both ways. This government cannot attend COP 27, claiming they're back—like the saviours that they think they are—whilst campaigning for donations from their fossil fuel mates and giving public money back to them. During my time at COP 27, just two weeks ago, I heard about the impacts of climate change that we're already having, particularly on our Pacific island neighbours, who also want to co-host COP 31 with the Australian government. I heard about the costs that local communities are facing now and about the impacts on culture and the traditional way of life. First Nations people are being displaced, leaving their ancestral homes because of climate change.

Climate change is real and climate change is here. The climate science spells it out clearly: we must say no to new fossil fuels and no to public money being given to these fossil fuel projects for expansion or the opening of new ones. The Greens will continue to push the government further and faster to be more ambitious in their climate commitments. Vanuatu's climate minister is asking the Australian government to do the same before they will agree to co-host COP 31 alongside them. It seems like a reasonable ask, would you not say, but we know that the government struggles when made to choose between its strong climate action commitment and lining the pockets of corporate donors in the fossil fuel industry.

The $9.1 billion in the budget for gas and petrochemical plants in the Middle Arm harbour was alongside the $42.7 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. Middle Arm, just like many other projects the government is throwing money at, is a dirty fossil fuel project that does not deserve public money. Middle Arm is estimated to increase the Northern Territory's emissions by 75 per cent and increase industrial air pollution by 500 per cent.

Middle Arm will sit just three kilometres away from Palmerston, where locals will have to breathe in the air toxins produced by this precinct. The project will destroy our climate and environment but also impact on the health of those living in this area. The Beetaloo and Barossa gas projects will also be used to power this gas and petrochemical hub at Middle Arm—public money for Middle Arm feeding into the public money for Beetaloo and Barossa, and these projects all depend on each other.

Last week we saw the resources minister jetting off to Japan and assuring foreign investors that their investment in Australia's fossil fuel industry is good and is a welcome investment. So thanks to her for doing that on our behalf. While the Australian government loves to give away money to billionaires, much of this investment in the fossil fuel projects comes from overseas investors such as Japan and South Korea. If only the government could commit to phasing out fossil fuels and putting the equivalent of that $40 billion into renewable energy and the infrastructure that we need to build a clean, green energy grid.

The government has a very important decision to make, and we think it's an easy decision—indeed, a decision that should have been made the second they won the election. The Greens want to stand in solidarity with Vanuatu and all of our Pacific nations. For years, they have been sounding alarms and begging the Australian government to take climate action seriously and take the action that is required. The social licence for fossil fuels is disappearing—and disappearing fast.

This government can no longer justify their subsidies to their giant corporation mates whilst wanting our Pacific neighbours to support our bid to host a climate conference. In COP27 I heard not just from our Pacific neighbours but also from those of the Torres Strait Islands—those that I've spoken about in this chamber and the alarming rates at which our low-lying islands are disappearing. We need to take that seriously. Our domestic policy that Minister Wong talked about today is just as important as supporting our neighbours in the Pacific.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will be voting against this motion, but I want to make it clear why we will be doing that. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy has just returned from a very successful COP27 in Egypt, at which Australia was warmly welcomed back into the fold, into the international community, as a climate change leader after nine very long years of neglect. We are delighted to join with our Pacific family in bidding to co-host COP31 in 2026. We want the Pacific to have a voice, and there is no better way than hosting this conference with them, in our region, for the Pacific to put their case before the world.

We look forward to working closely and cooperatively with the Pacific, to secure and deliver a COP that will look to a collective vision in this important environment. Minister Bowen met with the Vanuatu climate minister at COP. That minister has described having an Australian government with a strong agenda as a breath of fresh air. The level of support that we have received, for this bid, from around the world has been really encouraging, including very strong support from the Pacific region.

We also acknowledge that nations have differing positions, which are, rightly, debated at these international summits. The question that we have in front of us refers to the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct. The government is supporting the development of the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct, together with regional logistics hubs along key transport links. This investment will enable the precinct to be globally competitive and sustainable, with a focus on green hydrogen and critical minerals processing.

This investment is not a subsidy for fossil fuel. Rather, the funding will go towards infrastructure that will support users to export clean energy critical to meet our commitment to net zero. That means not only generating green hydrogen but also manufacturing and exporting lithium batteries, which are critical to the global energy transition and decarbonisation. Demand is growing overseas for these clean energy sources, and this investment will help to position the Northern Territory and northern Australia to diversify their economies and take advantage of new opportunities. It will provide significant economic benefits and sustainable jobs.

Middle Arm is already recognised as a potential site for renewable energy, with companies like Sun Cable looking to establish renewable energy battery facilities at Middle Arm. Instead of funding any particular companies, what we're seeking to do here is invest in common-use enabling infrastructure, like the marine works, which will give all potential users in the market an opportunity to grow and thrive—including those who are able to process and export green hydrogen and energy transition components.

There is some way to go until construction commences, and, as our friends would be well aware, the project is undergoing significant environmental assessments both under the Northern Territory Environment Protection Act and under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. These assessments will look clearly at the impact of the proposed construction.

The Australian government will work with the Northern Territory government, with the industry, with the local community and with the relevant First Nations communities to develop a sustainable growth plan for Middle Arm, with a view to further announcements next year on the implementation of this equity investment. The Australian government believes investing in projects such as the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct is an important way of setting up our economy and the Northern Territory for a sustainable future. We are committed to playing a constructive role as a climate change leader, and we also support economic and job opportunities where it makes sense to do so. We believe that this project has potential for both economic development and job opportunities in the Northern Territory. It will also help us into a sustainable future.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is a reflection of the complete failure of the Greens to get anything right on energy and also the complete embarrassment that was COP27 for the Greens political platform. Quite clearly, over the last couple of weeks, there has been no agreement among the countries of the world to get rid of or phase down—whatever you want to call it—fossil fuels. The headline in the Guardian online paper was 'Draft Cop27 agreement fails to call for "phase-down" of all fossil fuels'.

With this motion, the Greens are now trying to sneak into this chamber a decision that wasn't even taken at the climate conference. Why should Australia do something that other countries are not committed to do? Other countries are moving away from phasing down fossil fuels; the language in the agreement from this year's COP is more open to fossil fuel development than it was in the agreement from last year at Glasgow. That is because the rest of the world has woken up to the fact that we need coal, gas and oil to have a functioning modern economy and to feed ourselves.

One thing that must be stressed in this debate is that, in a few months time, by the end of this year, Australia will no longer produce urea based fertilisers. Urea fertilisers are the most commonly used fertilisers in Australia. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, of which urea is one, are the most commonly used fertilisers in the world. In fact, nitrogen based fertilisers feed around half the world's population right now.

Synthetic nitrogen based fertilisers come from natural gas. If we don't have natural gas, if we don't produce natural gas, we won't be able to feed half of the world's population. That is how the world works. They are the real facts. The rest of the world has found that out over the past year when Russian gas was denied to European manufacturers. They have had huge issues with producing fertilisers and that has sent fertiliser prices through the roof right across the world and has sent food prices up. That has fed into inflation, as we've seen right around the world, causing untold suffering, especially in poorer countries.

Here in Australia it is a travesty that we no longer will produce urea fertilisers. We used to be reliant on China, but they banned the export of them a few years ago. We will be reliant on the Middle East to grow our food rather than taking care of it ourselves. But we have plenty of gas resources in this country. We are just denying ourselves the use of them. We're not supporting them. This new government has scrapped funding for the development and exploration of new gas in the Beetaloo and the Cooper basins. We need to get back to supporting our country and our people. The rest of the world has worked out that you actually do need fossil fuels, not just to make things but to do the very simple things in life, like feed oneself.

The other thing this motion demonstrates is how wrong the Greens have been on energy over the past few years. I'm old enough to remember a few years ago Greens senators in this place saying that there's no market for coal, there's no future for it and no-one is going to make any money out of it anymore. That was their prediction. The prediction was there would be no business case to invest in fossil fuels. They have been wrong on that—fantastically wrong—and now they're trying to use the laws to ban people from investing in these projects, to stop them, even though there is a very strong economic case for Australia to invest in coal, oil and gas. You just have to look at our trade data.

People may not realise that over the last 12 months king coal has re-emerged. Coal has been re-coronated. It is the nation's biggest export once again. The biggest export from Australia over the past 12 months has been coal. It overtook iron ore in the last couple of months. For the last 12 months we exported $130 billion worth of coal. It alone is about a quarter of our merchandise exports, so one in every four dollars of exports from our nation come from coal. Iron ore is about $120 billion, so it's very important. Gas too is sitting just shy of $80 billion now. Together coal, gas and oil account for 40 per cent of our nation's merchandise exports—a massive amount of wealth for our country and indicative of how much demand there is for Australia's high-quality fossil fuels.

In that environment we should be increasing our production of those commodities. When the price of something goes up and demand goes up, we should respond to that and increase our fossil fuel production. We should help the free world especially overcome aggression from Russia and provide its own food and energy needs. This Greens motion would make us weaker and more dependent on dictatorial regimes that mean to do us harm.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As mentioned earlier, COP27 came to a close overnight with really little achieved in terms of reducing emissions. Australia played a more positive role than we have previously, which some would argue would not be hard. On the Climate Change Performance Index we still rank ninth last, out of 65 countries. This is a long way from the climate leadership spoken of by the government. Continuing to subsidise the fossil fuel industry will only make things worse. Giving money to the profitable industry responsible for global warming, given what we know about the state of the climate, makes no sense. Funding of the Middle Arm project is particularly bad.

The government has committed $1.9 billion to fund, as we heard, common-use infrastructure, which we are assured will be sustainable. Senator Grogan said that this is not a fossil fuel subsidy, but in estimates we were told that it is up to the market to decide. The NT government and private companies are openly talking about using it for fossil fuels, such as gas. If this proposal looks like a petrochemical plant, has the government ducking and weaving on whether it is a petrochemical plant and has the support of the gas industry then it seems to be a petrochemical plant.

At estimates the week before last I asked the department about what cost-benefit analysis had been done for this project. They weren't able to answer, so we still don't know how we can justify this $1.9 billion spend. I also asked if they were aware that the site chosen for Middle Arm, according to modelling done by the CSIRO and IPCC, will be underwater by 2100. They weren't aware of that either. So, while it's great to hear about the environmental impact assessments that will be undertaken, we're missing the whole point about climate change.

I think Senator Canavan highlighted that in his speech, when he talked about the need to continue to invest because it's profitable. With climate change, whether or not it's profitable is beside the point. Is it morally right to continue doing what we're doing given what we know about climate change? Not just given what we know, given what we're seeing—the flooding across the country, the droughts in the Horn of Africa.

We've heard people in parliament argue against loss and damage for people who live in countries who've contributed next to nothing to this issue, who are pleading with us to show some leadership. Finally, we have a government that's saying the right things, that's saying we will be leaders on climate. We're not seeing that yet, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that we continue to see them heading in the right direction, but $17.9 billion for a fossil fuel project is not heading in that direction, in the direction that Australians want, that millions of Australians voted for.

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

Vanuatu is calling out Australia on our nonsense. It's clearly said that Australia shouldn't host or co-host the next climate conference if we are giving public money to open up new coal, oil and gas projects. I completely agree with the Vanuatu climate minister on that.

I thought this government had made a commitment that there wouldn't be any new public money for fossil fuel subsidies, but, unfortunately, when the budget was handed down we saw some tweaks, sure, but we saw about $40 billion of the last government's fossil fuel subsidies retained by this government, who is so poor it can't put dental or mental health care into Medicare. It can't raise the rate of JobSeeker. It's too poor to do that, but it's not too poor to keep $40 billion of the last government's subsidies for the coal and gas industry. And then it has the audacity to add $1.9 billion for a new gas export terminal—without the consent of First Nations owners, I'm desperately sad to see. That's $1.9 billion for a new LNG export terminal and petrochemical hub.

We just heard from Labor: 'Oh, it might do other things as well. Don't look too hard.' Well, I'm afraid it is directly a gas export terminal that will prop up gas extraction from the Beetaloo Basin, for which the $50 million public grant fund proposed by the last government is also being retained by this government. This is a gas export terminal that will create a market for the Beetaloo gas basin, which also lacks First Nations' consent and which would be an absolute carbon bomb. So much for no fossil fuel subsidies and so much for being too poor to fund decent things in this country. The government isn't too poor to give yet more handouts to the gas companies that conveniently make large donations to both political parties.

The other thing that made me laugh/cry was the Labor Party saying this was a sustainable development precinct and not to worry because it's going to be assessed by the EPBC laws, our federal environment laws. Well, I am an environmental lawyer and I can tell you that there are no climate impacts considered under the EPBC Act because we do not yet have a climate trigger. So I'm afraid it gives me no comfort whatsoever that a gas export terminal will need tick-off from our current EPBC laws, which were written by former prime minister John Howard, because the climate impacts won't be considered.

Honestly—you could not make this stuff up! We're at $42.7 billion of public money over the forward estimates, over four years, going to prop up the fossil fuel sector—$42.7 billion over four years. That is an absolute outrage, from a government that said there wouldn't be any new public money for new coal, oil and gas, and from that same government which is crying poor when it comes to actually helping people with the cost of living and to doing things like increasing the pathetically low rate of JobSeeker, which these people kept below the poverty line.

It doesn't add up—except when you look at the donations from the coal, oil and gas industry. And of course, they only have to disclose those once a year, on 1 February. So it's just a very cosy little stitch-up.

It's no wonder that Vanuatu's climate minister is calling Australia out and urging us to not have new fossil fuel subsidies if Australia wants to host the next climate conference. The Greens are firmly in agreement with that position.

Those fossil fuel subsidies should have been dumped from the budget. There certainly should not have been $1.7 billion added for a new gas export terminal. The Labor government need to start remembering that at one time they made a commitment not to have new fossil fuel subsidies, and they ought to stick to that commitment.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Great news: Vanuatu still exists! Experts told us it would now be underwater due to global warming and rising sea levels, just like Al Gore forecast that Mount Kilimanjaro would have no snow by 2016. How many islands has Vanuatu lost due to rising sea levels? None. Mount Kilimanjaro is still topped with icy white powder. Maybe that's why it's now called climate change instead of global warming.

I thank the Australian Greens for this breaking news that Vanuatu's climate minister would only back Australia's bid to host the 2026 Conference of the Parties, the COP, if Australia does not commitment to any new coal or gas projects. With that headline, the solution is clear: Australia must immediately fund and build as many coal and gas projects as humanly possible, so there's no chance these parasites will be hosted here at the expensive UN World Economic Forum talkfest for climate elites, the 2026 COP.

What's the COP? The UN's Conference of the Parties involves millionaires, billionaires and politicians bouncing around the world in fuel-guzzling private jets to luxurious locations, gorging themselves on prime beef while preaching to us, the lowly peasants, to reduce our carbon dioxide footprint, stop flying, stop driving and stop eating red meat. If the 20267 COP were to be hosted in Australia, taxpayers would be forking out for the UN's globalist elite talkfest. We'd be paying for them to tell us to destroy our energy grid and commit economic suicide to appease the sun gods! If the COP, the Conference of the Parties, does not want to come to Australia, that is their loss. We'll keep our abundant protein-rich red meat, our delicious range of seafood, our cheap and reliable coal-fired power, our huge gas reserves and our efficient petrol and diesel cars. Let the UN's World Economic Forum Conference of the Parties eat their bugs in the dark while waiting for their electric vehicles to charge.

We have one flag. We are one community. We are one nation.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 2022 federal election saw a groundswell of support for candidates that support reducing Australia's emissions. Not only is the public support there for reducing emissions; it's also the necessary thing to do if we want to avoid further catastrophic climate change. So Australia, hosting a Conference of the Parties, or COP, meeting, to work together globally to prevent a mass extinction, should be a good thing. But hosting an international climate change conference is a not-so-cheap exercise in public relations, if you're committed to opening up more coal and gas mines, like this government is.

You can't have climate action while opening up more coal and gas. They are literally incompatible.

Vanuatu is absolutely correct to put conditions on its support for Australia's bid to host the COP. The government likes to talk about regaining our place on the international stage and how our partnerships with the Pacific are about respecting the Pacific family. Well, using island nations to greenwash Labor's fossil fuel agenda is a pretty atrocious way of showing respect to the Pacific. Pacific nations know this, and they aren't going to let it happen. They have proven themselves more than adept at lobbying richer and more powerful nations on climate policy, and they will continue to make decisions in the best interests of their people and their region.

If Labor were serious about climate action, they would put a stop to all new coal and gas mines, stop using public money to subsidise the fossil fuel sector and commit to phasing out fossil fuel use and exports. We need to transition to a clean-energy future. Giving $1.9 billion to a new petrochemical and LNG facility undermines our interests in the Pacific, it undermines Australia's credibility and, quite frankly, it undermines our chances of keeping global temperatures to a survivable level.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed.