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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Let me read you a quote:

There is growing agreement between economists and scientists that…risk of catastrophic and irreversible disaster is rising, implying potentially infinite costs of unmitigated climate change, including, in the extreme, human extinction.

Who was it who said that? Was it the many thousands of people who took to the streets over the weekend to protest about climate change and the government's inaction? Was it members of political parties here in this place, urging the government to take action? It was the IMF. It was the IMF who said this, barely weeks ago. There is now growing consensus, and not just across everyday Australian citizens, who at the moment are petitioning this government to declare a climate emergency. It is not just coming from our leading scientists, who are saying, 'Time is running out.' It is coming from some of the most senior economists in the global financial system.

It is time to tell it like it is. We are in a climate emergency and we are facing a mass extinction, including human civilisation. Had the Prime Minister gone to the global climate crisis summit barely a few weeks ago, he would've heard the stark warning from the world's scientists that the current commitments under the Paris agreement are not good enough. We need to do at least three to five times as much as countries like Australia are currently pledging if we are to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming. That's three to five times as much as what we are doing at the moment.

The world's scientists also told us last year that, because coal—especially in Australia—is the single-biggest contributor to climate change, we cannot continue our reliance on coal. In fact, they told us that, to have a chance of staying below a dangerous 1½ degrees, the world needs to be at least two-thirds out of coal for energy by 2030. That is why the time for coal is over, and that is why Australia needs a plan to quit coal. That's why today I'm introducing the Coal Prohibition (Quit Coal) Bill 2019. We're talking here about thermal coal—the coal that is burnt for electricity. Australia exports about 80 per cent of its thermal coal. About four times as much as we use domestically, burning it for power, we send overseas. It doesn't matter where it's burnt, because global warming impacts us all. Until we stop exporting coal, we will not be able to halt the climate crisis.

It is clear to everyday Australians that global warming is not under control. From the record drought that we are experiencing and that our farmers and communities are suffering through, and from the fact that towns are being told they might have to go without water, to the unprecedented numbers of fish kills and the numbers of people who are dying from heatwaves and bushfires, it is clear that the climate crisis is hitting, and it's hitting us hard. If Australia does not have a plan to exit from coal in an orderly way, we are going to make global warming worse, and that is a death sentence for people working on the land. It will mean more people will die from the heatwaves and bushfires that will hit, it will mean water will run out at a quicker rate and it will mean more extreme weather events.

This bill puts in place a plan that says thank you to all of those workers in coal communities, who have helped power our country. But we now know things about coal that we didn't know before. We now know that it's a toxic product, and when you use it as intended it kills. We need to do what Germany has done: reach an agreement in this parliament for a plan for the orderly phase-out of coal, one that will look after the affected communities. That means phasing it out at home. It means phasing out our exports. This bill puts in place a plan to do that over the next 10 years in a way that is achievable and in a way that the science requires. In my remaining time, I would invite the seconder for this bill, the member for Clark, to make a few comments.

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