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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum, and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

We stand at a truly terrifying point in human history. A point where we now know enough about atmospheric physics and complex adaptive systems to no longer be able to truthfully assure young people that 'everything will be ok'.

In March, on the release of the latest report from the IPCC, its Chair, Hoesung Lee told us that "we are walking when we should be sprinting."

Since then, we've seen a record-breaking cyclone in south-eastern Africa, wildfires in Chile, Canada, Europe and North Africa, heatwaves across Asia and Europe, global ocean surface temperatures at record highs and record-low Antarctic sea ice. Twenty-one of the thirty hottest days ever recorded occurred in July, and 2023 will very likely be the hottest year in history, by a considerable margin.

This is all happening at 1.2 degrees of warming and scientists warn us that we are on track to hit between 1.9 and 3.7 degrees by the end of the century.

Short term policy thinking, and decisions made by politicians who prioritise political expediency over our moral duty to young people and future generations has well and truly caught up with us.   

Climate change is not new. We've known about it for decades. Yet politicians and policy makers have failed to make the decisions necessary to change course. We have largely ignored scientists. Worse—some have mocked them, silenced them and actively defunded their work.

There are many good people in this parliament working incredibly hard for the people they represent. There are many pressing issues that deserve our attention. But as climate disasters unfold around the world and at home, the thing we will be judged on is how we respond to the climate and biodiversity crises. This is surely the thing that will ultimately matter to young people and future generations when they look back on us.

We will be judged on whether we rose to the challenge and did what was necessary. Whether we had the courage to take on the industries that have actively sowed doubt and delayed climate action. Whether we finally took real action on climate change and worked to protect Australia's incredible biodiversity. Whether we reshaped our economy and invested enough in adaptation.

Future generations will judge us based on the world they inherit.

They will be able to see whether or not we made decisions as if we believed that young people also have a right to a stable climate, to an exciting future. Whether or not we fought for them and their futures.

All through human history we find proverbs and lessons about the need to make decisions with the long arc of history in mind. In just one example, the Ancient Greeks held that a society grows great when the old plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. These societies weren't always great at executing on those beliefs. But often that was due to a lack of knowledge about the challenges facing them. We cannot say the same.

As a country we continue to give preference to the interests of voting-age adults above young people.

Children cannot vote or run for public office, so we politicians have little incentive to think about them when decisions are made. They can't bargain or trade with us. They can't run national advertising campaigns, host political fundraising dinners, employ lobbyists or get an orange lanyard. As a result, they have little representation in the market or in this building.

The worst represented are the youngest and those yet to be born. With no way to make their views heard: they can't tweet, write articles, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

And we are destroying their future.

Some will say that is alarmist. But a child born today is born into a world that is hotter than it has ever been in human history. They will witness huge loss and destruction. They are more likely to suffer in bushfires, floods, heatwaves and other disasters. Without bold leadership and action, the climate that will be experienced by a child born today is grim.

They'll see an increase in coastal flooding and shoreline retreat along sandy coasts, as well as the death of our coral reefs. Those quintessential Australian summer holidays will look very different for a child born today across their lifetime. Summer temperatures of 50 degrees will be experienced in places like Sydney and Melbourne. Scientists are warning us that the most extreme statistical outliers today will become average in just twenty years.

All of this is not just possible, it is likely. Some of it is locked in, even if we do act with speed and ambition. But if we don't start to act like short-term profits and our fossil fuel exec buddies matter less than the children we love so much, things will be much, much worse.

With the knowledge that, for the first time in human history, we can say with some certainty that future generations will be worse off than we are, the government faces dozens of decisions that will shape how we look back on this parliament, this decade—the critical decade.

And so far it doesn't look good. We've seen decisions by the Minister to approve coal mine expansions in Mount Pleasant, Narrabri and Encham. And there's a stack of coal and gas project applications that would drastically increase emissions.

The real test of this government is coming. The massive scale of proposed gas projects in the Beetaloo Basin, to Barossa, Browse, Veritas, Narrabri and the North West Shelf is terrifying. Emissions from proposed coal projects like Peak Downs, Blackwater South and Mount Pleasant are difficult to comprehend.

When these decisions are made, we must consider the impact they will have on the climate that will be inherited by our children and future generations.

In the case of Sharma v Minister for the Environment, Anjali Sharma and seven other brave school students argued that the Federal Environment Minister has a duty to protect them and other young people from the future harm caused by the climate change impacts of a proposed coal mine extension project.

The initial judgement found a duty of care does exist. In that judgement, Justice Bromberg eloquently summarised the future faced by Australian children when he said:

It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the Children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the World as we know it gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. As for the human experience—quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature's treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper—all will be greatly diminished. Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain. None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.

Despite this, the students were ultimately unsuccessful after the former government appealed the decision. A key reason given by the court of appeal was that the case centred on core policy questions that the court considered unsuitable for judicial determination.

Put another way, it is our role, the role of legislators, of parliamentarians to ensure we have a duty of care to our children and the ones still to come.

I am proud to be working with Anjali Sharma to try and ensure we have that duty.

It's up to us, as legislators, to ensure that we do what is right for Australia's young people, children and future generations.

This Bill will address the current failure to consider the health and wellbeing of Australian children and future generations when decisions are made that result in substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

It does this in two ways.

First, a decision maker must consider the impact of the greenhouse gas emissions on the health and wellbeing of current and future Australian children when making certain decisions under specific legislation. Their health and wellbeing is to be the paramount consideration where decisions of this nature are made.   

Second, in the case of decisions involving the exploration or extraction of coal, oil or gas, the decision maker is prevented from making decisions where the resulting greenhouse gas emissions are likely to pose a material risk of harm to the health and wellbeing of current and future Australian children.

We owe it to children and young people to make decisions that protect their future. Our actions today shape the world they inherit, and it is our moral responsibility to shape it for the better.

And we can do this. We don't have to just accept the status quo. I ask you to imagine a future where we've taken our duty seriously. I ask you to help build a future where we make decisions differently.

A future where my niece, Georgia, and all the children in your lives who you know and love, as well as the generations to come, know we did everything we could to make their future as good as it can be.

I commend this Bill to the Senate.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.