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

Senator McKim. Overnight, the United Nations released what it describes as a lesson on how to defuse the climate time bomb. It makes it very clear that the most urgent action we need to take is to stop new fossil fuel projects, and stop them now. But what has Labor presented to this parliament? The safeguard mechanism: a blueprint written by the psychopaths running fossil fuel corporations for implementation by the psychopaths who do their bidding here in this parliament. It's a culpable act of delay and deception that large numbers of people will pay for with their lives. And, of course, the big polluters are cheering hard for it because they know it's a deliberately crafted protection racket for business as usual.

Labor has created a narrative, supported by a craven press gallery in this place—with only a few honourable exceptions—whereby somehow aiming for a safe climate is seen as unreasonable. And the Greens, the only party taking the looming catastrophe seriously, are told that we're being too ambitious, that the Greens are somehow letting the perfect be the enemy of the good—as if there's anything good in the steaming pile of dog vomit bowled up by Labor. And this is when it's the Australian Labor Party lining up to join in on what Greta Thunberg today described as the greatest betrayal in human history. The Labor Party wants the Greens to join them in that great betrayal. The planet is literally cooking. Labor needs to get serious or get out of the way.

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

I too rise to talk about the IPCC report released overnight. It is right that we turn our attention towards this survival guide for humanity. The report paints a bleak and sobering picture if we do not act decisively. But it also offers hope. If we are able to muster up the political will to implement the solutions that we already have, then there is a narrow window where we can secure a future for all the people and places we love. In all of the debate in this place, the thing that is not often talked about is that this is about the people and places we love.

The report says that the world is likely to hit 1.5 degrees of warming within the next decade. We've just lived through a summer with 1.1 degrees of warming. This is the new normal. This is what we're facing, as communities and as a nation. It is irresponsible to put up policy that isn't up to scratch and doesn't guarantee that emissions will start to go down. It's policy that hopes our biggest emitters will do the right thing. It's policy that puts us next to Kazakhstan as one of only two countries in the world that allow unfettered access to offsets. We can do better.

When then prime minister Tony Abbott repealed the carbon tax there was an IPCC report. There's now an IPCC report and a Senate that wants bold climate action. I implore the government to take up that offer and to head in the right direction, not to continue on this path we've been going down. (Time expired)