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

There are 114 new coal and gas projects in the approvals pipeline, and right now both the government and the opposition want to see them developed. This would create 2½ times as much pollution as Australia currently produces every year. The International Energy Agency has said that, to meet either the 1½ degrees or the net zero by 2050 goal supposedly adopted by both of those parties, not one single new coal, oil or gas project can proceed. One of these 114 projects alone could blow every climate target.

In order to reach the goal of a safe planet, Australia needs to hit pause on all new coal and gas projects. That's why the Greens want to see a freeze put on any new projects. We shouldn't be pouring more petrol on the fire; we should be trying to put it out. Young people get it. They have taken this government to court over its approval of new coalmines and how an expansion of coal will damage their health and wellbeing. Governments hold a duty of care for future generations. The Federal Court has backed in these eight young Australians, but the government is appealing to the full Federal Court because this government refuses to be bound by any such notion like caring for and looking after future generations. Liberal and Labor want more goal and gas but the Greens don't. That's why I'm proud to table this petition supporting the brave young people taking this government to court over its expansion of coal and gas. No more coal and gas.

The petition read as follows—

Our world is heating up due to burning of coal and the Minister for the Environment should stop approving coal mines that add fuel to the fire and make the crisis worse.

In the words of Justice Bromberg in the Sharma case: "As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the World as we know it gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain. None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next."

Since the judgment the Minister for the Environment has approved FOUR coal mines arguing that if we don't do it somebody else will. It is a logical fallacy that contravenes basic economic principles of supply and demand. It is immoral, just like a drug dealer saying "if I don't supply the drugs, someone else will".

We therefore ask the House to advise the Federal Minister for the Environment to exert her duty of care towards Australian Children and to stop encouraging the extraction and burning of coal.

from 959 citizens. (Petition No. EN3499)

Petition received.