Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

With the whole of New South Wales declared 'in drought' during the latter half of last year, 2018, this drought will be recorded as one of the more significant in Australia's history, ranking alongside the Millennium Drought, the drought in the 1960s and the World War II and Federation droughts. But of all of those droughts, only the Millennium Drought saw similar accompanying high temperatures. That's because eight of the 10 warmest years on record in Australia have occurred since 2005, and 2018 is on course to be the fourth warmest year on record. January of this year was our hottest month on record—not our hottest January on record but our hottest month on record. In fact, on 15 January this year, Australia was home to all 15 of the world's hottest temperatures.

This is a sign of things to come. This is what is going to become a much more regular occurrence if we don't tackle climate change. And what does this government do? It comes in here and pretends to be on the side of farmers, but at the same time it's doing everything it can to make global warming worse—to set us on track for a 92 per cent decline in the Murray-Darling Basin by the end of the century and to ensure that we hit that 1½ degree threshold of dangerous global warming as early as 2030.

This government is doing everything it can to make global warming worse. At the very same time as farmers in our country are suffering through this very, very harsh drought, they are doing everything they can to use taxpayers' money to fund coal-fired power stations before the election. They are doing everything they can to see new coalmines opened at the same time as the world's scientists are telling us that by 2030 we have to be getting out of coal. Two-thirds of the world's coal-fired power stations have to shut down by 2030, but this government says, 'How can we make global warming worse,' and uses public money to dig more coal up, have the Adani coalmine opened and, in fact, perhaps open the whole of the Galilee Basin. This government is spitting in the eye of farmers. This government is giving the middle finger to farmers.

If this government actually cared about what is happening on the land and if this government actually wanted to make sure that we can have sustainable agriculture in this country for the remainder of this century, this government would be listening to the scientists and would be pulling out all stops to ensure that by as soon as 2030 we are not tipping over into a dangerous 1½ degrees of global warming.

But what do we have instead? We've got a Prime Minister who comes in here and cradles lumps of coal. He might as well be throwing that straight at every farmer in Australia. He might as well be going to every farmer and saying, 'I don't want you to have a future.' Not only did the Prime Minister and the government come in here and cradle lumps of coal but then they come in here and chortle when thousands of school students—more than 15,000 last year and there will be even more on 15 March—say: 'Hey! We've been paying attention in school. We see this drought that is happening right around the country. We see these extreme weather events. We see the fact that in Tasmania we have just had fires during summer that have destroyed some of the forest that has been there since Gondwanaland and is not going to be able to recuperate, because it's not used to fire. We see all this and we don't want to have to deal it because you are so beholden to the coal lobby that you're going to make the problem worse.'

When they say: 'We now feel that this is a climate emergency and we are going to do what we can as students, because we don't have the right to vote. We're going to take time off school, we're going to go on strike and we're going to march to say, "Help us stop these droughts becoming a regular occurrence, help us stop floods becoming a regular occurrence and help us stop bushfires becoming something that happens to us every Christmas holidays,"' this government turns around and laughs at them as well. It laughs at them and says, 'They have no right to stand up.' Well, people are standing up to this government and saying, 'Enough is enough; stop screwing our future!' Students are saying it, people right across our cities are saying it, people right across the regions are saying it and farmers are saying it. Farmers For Climate Action were here today in this building, saying that they are committed to making sure that parts of their sector are carbon neutral by 2030. What an ambition!

And what does this government do? This government says, 'How can we build more coal fired power station by 2030?' Pollution is going up and up and up on this government's watch at a time when it should be coming down. And so when they come in here and say, 'Oh, please, we'll pretend that we care because we're announcing a future drought fund where we're going to rob the money from some other section of the budget and put it into a bucket where it's not going to be targeted in any particular way and where we can't guarantee that it is actually going to help any farmers in particular,' it's no wonder that the parliament, like the Australia people, is standing up to this government and saying, 'We no longer believe you.'

When you start treating climate change as an optional extra, something you can thumb your nose at, then people will rise up. It's no wonder, and it should come as no surprise, that the reason we are in this minority parliament, where the government faces losing votes on things like climate change, is because they rolled their own Prime Minister over the question of climate change and because he wasn't doing enough to back in the coal-huggers.

The coal-huggers continue to run this government. We see that with this bill. We see it in their lack of action on climate change and their lack of even mentioning climate change. We hear it in the contempt that they show for students, for farmers and for the people who live right around this country every time they stand up and demand a decent climate change policy. I say to the government: it is one of the reasons you are on the verge of being turfed out. It is one of the reasons that the Australian people will say in a few short weeks—and it can't come soon enough—that enough is enough; it is time to take action on climate change. If we care about the drought then we will stop the digging up, the burning and the exporting of coal, because that is one thing that is within our control and it is one thing we must do.

Debate adjourned.

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