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

Finally, after eight years, a piece of legislation that might actually do something good for renewables. Why did it take eight years? Could it be because the energy minister, who's in charge of this legislation—but doesn't have the courage to come and sit here at the dispatch box, so he leaves it up to his junior to come in to fly the flag—earned his political stripes campaigning against wind farms and renewable energy? Could that be the reason it has taken us almost nine years to see a piece of legislation that supports renewables? Could it be because the former Treasurer Joe Hockey said that wind farms were ugly and he couldn't stand them, as he goes around Canberra? Could it be that because the person holding the purse strings in this parliament said, 'I don't want wind farms, and there's no way that I'm going to ever support them?' Could it be because the man who is now the Deputy Prime Minister said he didn't understand, in his words, 'this insane lemming-like desire to have a sea of wind farms everywhere'? Could that be why it has taken almost nine years to see one piece of legislation that might do something good about renewables? Or could it be because our Prime Minister came in here and held up a lump of coal and said, 'This is coal. It's amazing. It won't hurt you,' when the whole world was screaming at him and saying that coal and gas are the major causes of the climate crisis, and we've got to stop burning them?

Could that be why it has taken so long to see one piece of legislation from the government that might actually do something good for renewables?

Well, increasingly, this government led by climate deniers is getting mugged by reality. Is it the political reality of having seats that they thought were supersafe, like Kooyong, now being Greens-Liberal seats, where a small number of votes could shift and the Treasurer could get the message that it is time to take action on the climate crisis? Or could it be that they're getting mugged by the political reality of seeing a former prime minister lose his seat to an independent who's got an ambitious climate policy? Could it be the fact that the Prime Minister is heading off to one of the most important climate summits in our lifetime, where, if he walked in with his lump of coal, he'd be turned around and kicked out, shown the door? Slowly but surely, the government is getting mugged by reality, including by the business community, who are saying, 'We have had enough.' Mind you, many of them are the same business community that tore down the carbon price when we had it, which was working to cut pollution in this country. They've now had a change of heart. But, increasingly, the government are realising that, although it might play well to their backbench to wave around lumps of coal and pretend climate change doesn't exist, it doesn't wash anymore. It doesn't wash.

Of course, they still have climate denialism at their heart. You see that just this week, where the world is pleading with the Prime Minister, who should have done a piece of legislation like this long ago—because the Greens have been calling for it for that long. The reason that—

A government member interjecting—

We hear the truth being spoken. The Liberal interjection, for the Hansard, was 'We're only one per cent of global emissions; what can we do?' Well, you know what? That shows you everything you need to know. I'm sure that they'll get up and correct that if they think I'm misrepresenting them. But that is what this government believes at heart: we should not be taking action on the climate crisis. That is why. You've heard it in the government's own words. Do you know what? Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal. We're the third-largest exporter of fossil fuel pollution, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. Don't come in here and pretend we're not responsible. We are the third-largest exporter of fossil fuel pollution. And you know who we'll be hanging out with at the climate summit when Scott Morrison goes there? Russia and Saudi Arabia—with these mid-century net zero targets and no plan to get there, and subsidies for coal, gas and oil to put more coal, gas and oil into the system along the way.

This is a government of climate deniers, and delay is the new denial. Pushing action out to 2050 and coming up with a plan that involves more coal and gas, terrible 2030 targets and just a hope that someone will ride in on a unicorn in 2049, with technology that hasn't been invented yet, to save us all shows your plan is a fraud. The fact that the government send members in here, during a debate on their own bill about wind farms, to interject that 'we're only one per cent of emissions so why should we do anything' tells you everything you need to know about the denial that beats at the heart of this government.

That is why, to get action on the climate crisis, we need to phase out coal and gas. Sadly, we have a situation in this parliament where both the government and the opposition want more coal and gas. In fact, they're prepared to put their hands into the public's pocket to make people pay for it. People may not know this, but, thanks to the government and the opposition voting together, $50 million of public money is now going to help open up a new climate time-bomb in the Northern Territory—the Beetaloo gas basin. You thought Adani was bad? Beetaloo is terrible. Inside those Northern Territory gas basins there's the equivalent of 70 years of all of Australia's pollution. And opening up that project will put an extra six per cent on Australia's emissions. So, at the same time that the Prime Minister parades around, saying he's going to cut emissions to zero at some specified time in the future and, 'I've got no plan to get there; just trust me,' Liberal and Labor are actually making the public give $50 million to big gas corporations to open up the Beetaloo basin, which will be worse than Adani.

We have, sadly, a situation here where the country is run by a bunch of climate deniers, but the opposition wants more coal and gas as well. The only way we are going to tackle the climate crisis is by phasing out coal and gas. What is becoming clearer day by day is that the only way we're going to get climate action—and not just have legislation like this brought in after nine years of government—brought in on the first day of the next government is to kick the Liberals out and put the Greens in balance of power, to push the next government to take the action that science requires and phase out coal and gas. The very good news is that this government is hanging on by its fingernails. That's why it's bringing in pieces of legislation like this after nine years—to try and convince people that they care about renewables. They know that the smallest of shifts, only a few hundred votes, is going to see them lose majority government. That's how close this election is. But it's going to be very difficult for the opposition to win in its own right. So at this election, if you want more legislation that's going to fast track renewables and phase out coal and gas, don't waste your vote on a Liberal or Labor Party that won't be able to win majority government in their own right. Vote to put the Greens in the balance of power so that we can kick out the Liberals and push the next government. That is how we're going to see legislation that will unlock this country's potential.

This bill is about offshore wind. Did you know that Australia has around 2,000 gigawatts of offshore energy that we can harness? To put that into perspective, Australia's entire grid is around 55 gigawatts. In other words, there's 40 times Australia's current energy use in our offshore waters. That's why the Greens have been saying for so long that we need legislation that will help unlock that potential.

There are a couple of key projects that are trying to get underway but that don't have any regulatory environment, and this bill will allow them to proceed. There's the Star of the South project, which is going to help replace Australia's oldest and dirtiest coal plant, Yallourn, in Victoria's Latrobe Valley. And there is Oceanex's 10 gigawatts project currently situated offshore of the New South Wales coal regions of the Hunter Valley and the Illawarra. Just these two projects alone—bearing in mind, as I said, that there's about 40 times Australia's current energy use out there to be tapped—are near the regions where we're going to have to phase out coal. These projects will be the projects that will help workers transition as we phase out coal and gas, which is why they should have been supported a long time ago—so that we could replace those coal-fired power stations and turn them off in a way that allows workers to move directly into secure industries with well-paid jobs. It makes so much sense. What also makes sense is to use the infrastructure that's already there to create hydrogen, to create ammonium and to power heavy industry and manufacturing with clean energy, instead of relying on last century's increasingly unreliable coal and gas technologies.

But the good thing about there being 40 times the equivalent of Australia's energy just in wind alone—we haven't even touched solar yet or what we're going to be able to do in backing it all up with hydro—is that we could have a surplus mentality. We could produce so much electricity that it would drive the cost down to near zero because the fuel is free. That's the other great thing about the sun and the wind: they are free. You could drive the cost of electricity down to zero. Not only is that going to revitalise manufacturing in this country when we have cheap, clean electricity; we're also going to be a magnet for all those energy-hungry industries in the world and in our region. The Greens want Australia to be the place where you bring your energy-hungry industry to from around the world and you set up here because you get an advantage in Australia that no-one else can give you. We can give you low-cost electricity that is clean. This is what we could do if we unleash the potential that Australia has.

There is a number of practical changes to this bill that would help. We could amend the bill to include a merit criteria for feasibility licences, commercial licences and transmission licences in a way that would include local procurement of labour and goods right through the logistics and supply chains. This could unleash a massive domestic employment potential. We could get people jobs. If we said, 'We are not only going to have these offshore wind farms in our area but we will put in place laws and rules that drive up local employment and local training,' this could be a massive jobs bonanza. We should have Australians crewing the ships that are going out to be part of these projects and build back up a shipping industry that has been decimated over the course of several governments.

We should also remove the possibility of financial speculators or scalpers rushing in to buy tenements by removing from the bill that the minister consider and accept financial offers from licences and, instead, manage and distribute them in the public interest to rapidly develop clean energy. A third change to the bill could be the suggestion put forward during the inquiry by Sun Cable that would make it clearer that one of the main objects of the law is to encourage the export of Australia's vast renewable resources to the world. For clarity and purpose to both investors and lawyers, this implicit obligation of the legislation should be made explicit. Finally, as mentioned by previous speakers, the workplace health and safety provisions should be fully harmonised with the national system to ensure that the standards that apply to workplace health and safety are the best that they can be. I support the comments made by one of the members of the opposition on that point.

You can't trust this government to go ahead and implement legislation well. We have seen that with JobKeeper. We have to make sure that they don't turn a good piece of legislation into something that is a millstone around the industry's neck. We hope they won't. But above all, we have to get out of coal and gas. We need to stop giving public money to coal and gas because that will slow down the growth of this amazing potential industry in Australia that could set us up, not only as a renewable energy superpower but as the regional hub for clean, cheap energy.

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