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

The laws which are meant to protect our environment are broken, but we have the power to fix them. Right now, native species are disappearing before our eyes and ecosystems are crumbling. The State of the climate report was released last week, and it confirmed that the situation is bleak. The climate crisis is caused by the mining and burning of coal and gas, yet currently the cost to our climate is not even considered when assessing new coal and gas projects. This has to change.

Next week, the government is finally set to respond to the Samuel review into our broken environmental laws. The review recommended some big, urgent and overdue changes, and this is because currently our laws do more to protect coal and gas than they do to protect endangered species, the environment or our future. The most important thing our environment laws need is a climate trigger. A climate trigger would finally ensure that climate pollution is taken into account when considering approvals for new coal and gas mines.

Most Australians would find it frankly outrageous that this is not done already. Right now, there are 114 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline around the country. A climate trigger is our best defence against the fossil fuel corporations, who donate millions to the major parties to profit, pollute and get their way. It's time to take the power back from the coal and gas corporations that have captured the Liberal and Labor parties, protect the environment and put a climate trigger in our environment laws to fight the climate crisis instead of fuelling it.