Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, don't open new coalmines. You've abrogated that trust—who do want their homes to be safe from fires and floods, who don't want thousands of extra deaths in our cities from heatwaves and who do want to preserve our natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef. This is what people want, so Labor are employing a deliberate strategy to gaslight the Australian people.

Here's Labor's strategy: what do we need to do to look like we're doing something about climate while protecting the interests of the coal and gas corporations? The government have an intentional strategy to lie to you about climate, Australians, to distract you from what they're actually doing. Labor wants you to focus on the coalition's implosion over net zero and away from the big coal and gas corporations pretty much screwing over everyday Australians while Labor does everything to protect them.

The Labor government doesn't want you to know that many huge mining corporations are not paying any corporate tax—zilch; zero. Labor doesn't want you to know that gas corporations are giving our offshore gas away for free and making massive profits but not paying any royalties. Labor really doesn't really want you to know that our fossil fuel exports contribute far more to climate change than domestic emissions—4.5 times more. That's the exports. Big coal and gas corporations love this focus on domestic emissions because it means you're not looking at them wrecking our climate and environment and making huge profits while they dodge taxes. And it's a Labor government who are protecting these corporations at your expense, Australians. Don't let them fool you.

Some conspiracy theories are actually real. Here's one you'll want to hear: big corporations really do control our government. And here's the story.

Labor promised environmental law reform—the truth hurts sometimes, doesn't it?—when they came into government in 2022. The Greens said we were happy to work with them—

this is what happened—to protect nature and the climate. We came to a deal with then environment minister Tanya Plibersek, but the mining industry—companies like Woodside, Santos and BHP—were not happy. They got on the phone to Western Australian premier Roger Cook—this is all fact—who then personally called the Prime Minister to tell him to kill the deal, and he did at the eleventh hour.

Then, under pressure from the same big corporations, in February this year—

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