Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. Forty billion dollars: that is the dollar value the government has set aside for the fossil fuel industry. Forty billion dollars. This corporate gift comes at a time when fossil fuel companies are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in profit off the backs of struggling households and families. As these companies continue to make record profits we continue to live through the effects of the climate crisis. We're living through times where heavier and more frequent rainfall causes floods, and hotter, drier periods cause bushfires. The time between these respective La Nina and El Nino extremes is becoming shorter and shorter, and island nations like Vanuatu are sinking below ever-rising sea levels. My electorate of Brisbane has still not fully recovered from the floods that devastated our communities not even a year ago.

That $40 billion in subsidies also comes at a cost to our public and social services. We are repeatedly told that all of us have to make sacrifices during this cost-of-living crisis, but that's not exactly true because BHP don't have to give up their subsidies. Woodside don't have to give up their tax breaks. Santos get to keep their part of the $40 billion. Meanwhile the rest of Australia is told by this government that we cannot get dental into Medicare, we can't make uni free again and we can't build the number of social homes that our country actually needs. The truth is that we can do those things, it's just that the government has chosen to help the fossil fuel industry over you.

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