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

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Melbourne from moving the following motion immediately—That the House:

(1) notes the release of the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report on the escalating climate emergency;

(2) notes the statement by the UN Secretary-General that there can be no new coal, oil and gas projects and Australia and other developed countries must phase out coal by 2030; and

(3) calls on the Government to heed the call of the IPCC and the UN Secretary-General and stop approving new coal and gas projects.

There could be nothing more urgent and needing debate in this place today than the message that we have received from the UN Secretary-General and the world scientists overnight. The UN Secretary-General told us: 'Dear friends, humanity is on thin ice, and that ice is melting fast.' He has issued what is to us a call to defuse the climate timebomb that is ticking, and he is giving us a survival guide to humanity.

This is the final warning from the world's scientists. This is what has been referred to as our last-ditch chance. The urgency with which the world's scientists and the UN are calling on us to act cannot be underestimated and demands that we suspend standing orders today to debate this and to determine how we're going to respond. Why is this so critical? We have been told by the world's scientists overnight that we are on track to go above 1.5 degrees, and it could happen within a few years time. Why is that critical? That will mean absolute and utter devastation for our Pacific Island neighbours. They have urged us to take all steps to limit global warming to 1½ degrees or they face an existential threat. They have been crystal clear about that to us and the science is crystal clear about that to us, because what the report also tells us, overnight, that demands our urgent attention is that vulnerable communities are 15 times more likely to be affected by the extreme floods and fires and droughts and rising sea levels that we are facing at the moment. They are the ones who did not cause the climate crisis, but they are the ones who have the most to lose from the climate crisis and the least ability to respond to it.

Not only in the Torres Strait Islands but also in the Pacific islands of our neighbours, we are seeing sea levels rising and extreme storms that are damaging homes right now. But what the IPCC also told us overnight is that people are already dying from the extreme heat. The climate crisis is already taking lives and killing people. It is already happening. It is, in the words of one commentator, a 'screaming siren' that cannot be ignored.

But there is a way out. We have been given a way out, but we have to grasp it urgently. We have to grasp it urgently today. This has been made crystal clear by the UN Secretary-General:

This is the moment for all G20 members to come together in a joint effort, pooling their resources and scientific capacities as well as their proven and affordable technologies through the public and private sectors to make carbon neutrality a reality by 2050.

Every country must be part of the solution.

Demanding others move first only ensures humanity comes last.

The Acceleration Agenda calls for a number of other actions.

Specifically:

No new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries.

Ending all international public and private funding of coal.

Ensuring net zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.

Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas—consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency.

Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves.

Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition.

Establishing a global phase down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net zero target.

I urge all governments to prepare energy transition plans consistent with these actions and ready for investors.

We could not agree more. That is why, right now, we need to suspend standing orders to work out how we are going to do what the UN Secretary-General and the world's scientists have asked us to do.

We have a debate on the government's safeguard legislation, the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022, coming up later on today. I want to say that this isn't an attempt to delay that. We can have a debate about this and then move on to that. But we have to listen to what we are being told and take that into account as we work out in this country how we are going to tackle the climate crisis. When the UN Secretary-General calls out countries like Australia and says there can be no new coal and we must stop any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves, it is because humanity is at stake and civilisation is at stake. Every new coal and gas project opened in Australia is a death warrant for our children and our grandchildren. We are the ones who sit here now hearing the report that we may hit 1½ degrees potentially within 10 years, if not by the end of this decade. This is happening right now. The actions need to be taken right now.

There is a lot in this report on which you would find agreement among most people in this parliament. But what is crystal clear is that the single biggest thing we could do in this country is stop pouring petrol on the fire. You can't put a fire out while you're pouring petrol on it. The first step in fixing a problem has to be to stop making the problem worse. We have come a long way in this country. It is good that we saw, just under a year ago, the Australian people speak up and say, 'We want the parliament to take action on the climate crisis.' People now understand that, in order to do that, the single biggest gift that Australia could make to the rest of the world is to stop putting the rest of the world and itself in danger by exporting so much coal and gas and by using so much of it here. That is what our Pacific island neighbours have been asking us for a long time—stop opening coal and gas. It is what the scientists have been asking us for a long time. It is what the UN Secretary-General is asking us in the clearest possible terms, in the most urgent of warnings, to do and to do right now.

So that is why we have to suspend standing orders and have a debate on this now, so that when we debate the other important legislation that the government has, including legislation to tackle the climate crisis, later today and over the course of the next couple of weeks, we will do it with the warnings of the world's scientists and the advice of the UN Secretary-General ringing in our ears. There is no space left to open up new coal and gas projects. It is putting people at risk. It is putting our country risk. It is putting lives at risk. So I hope that we will have time to debate this important report, to digest the significance of it and to translate it into action. Other countries are starting to do this. When Barack Obama was president, he stopped exploration on federal lands with respect to coal. Germany had a plan and phased out its brown coal. The penny is dropping elsewhere, and the penny needs to drop here as well. If we really want fewer floods, less drought and fewer extreme weather events that take lives and livelihoods, we have to stop opening coal and gas.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I'm not seconding the motion. I'm speaking against it.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm calling for a seconder. Member for Kennedy, can you just resume your seat for a moment.

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

-BROWN () (): I second the motion. Today's IPCC report confirms what we already knew: we need to stop approving new coal and gas now if we are to have any hope of avoiding truly catastrophic global warming. It was just over a year ago now that we in Brisbane felt the very real impacts of climate change. Thousands of families lost everything. It was absolutely devastating. But it wasn't just the flooding itself. This event affected almost every aspect of our lives, with food shortages on supermarket shelves, and roads and public transport corridors cut—in many cases offline for months. Of course, this added to the existing housing and rental crisis by forcing people out of their homes. That was just in Brisbane last year. That's not to mention the bushfires that ravaged Western Australia only a few months ago, the floods that have absolutely devastated large parts of regional Queensland and north-western Australia—more so-called once-in-a-century events—or the increasingly regular and devastating mega floods and fires in many other parts of the world.

I could go on, but it's clear that this government is more interested in listening to the fossil fuel industry than to climate scientists. Clearly, the nearly $6 million in donations they've taken over the last decade from coal, oil and gas companies have prioritised the interests of those companies over our children's and grandchildren's futures. How cheap—selling off our kids' futures for a measly $6 million.

This IPCC report is crystal clear. We need to end all new coal and gas. The government's proposed safeguard mechanism that we're going to be debating, as it stands now, does not address this. It allows new coal and gas mines to open and to keep polluting. The government even boasts that Shell, Woodside and Rio Tinto all approve of this bill. Of course they do, because it safeguards their profits over our planet. It'll see emissions go up. One proposed gas project, the Scarborough project in Western Australia, will emit an estimated 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon over its lifetime. This blows away even the most optimistic estimates of emissions reduction from the safeguard mechanism, and that's just one gas project.

I hope everyone here in this House is very carefully considering their vote on this issue, because their constituents have spoken clearly. The Guardian reported today that the majority of voters in the member for Moreton's electorate support stopping new coal and gas projects; the majority of voters in the member for Bennelong's electorate support stopping new coal and gas; and the majority of voters in Sydney, the environment minister's electorate, support stopping new coal and gas. Instead, the government are continuing to provide public money to new fossil fuel projects, and they're in lock step with the previous government on handing out $1.5 billion in taxpayer money to the Beetaloo basin project in the Northern Territory, against the wishes of even their members in Northern Territory Labor. This is along with another $10 billion or so in fossil fuel subsidies that the government regularly commits to. Government needs to end these subsidies now and divert that money into urgent investment in renewables. Listen to the IPCC, listen to the climate scientists and listen to voters in your own electorates, and stop new coal and gas.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst I most certainly agree and have always advocated, long before it was a popular thing—I speak with some authority, because I didn't talk about it; I did it. I am on the record as providing the first standalone solar system in Australian history. The head of GE from America came out for the opening ceremony. It was a very important fact. But to achieve that I had to do a hell of a lot of research on silicon. We wanted to provide the world's high-tech silicon. We've got the best silicon deposits in the world. They're already smashed up into fine particles, a very fine sand, which makes them very cheap, and they're 98 per cent pure, so we wanted to develop that.

You must understand that a solar panel is not carbon neutral—anything but. You have spiral separation, which takes up no energy, but then you have to put it under electromagnets, which burns up an enormous amount of energy, putting enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's not the fun part. The fun part is where you have to crush silicon into flour. Silicon is the second hardest metalloid on earth, second only to diamond, and you've got to crush it. That burns up a hell of a lot of power. So we've got electromagnetic power going up and now we've got the crushing powder going up, but that's not the real fun part. The real fun part is when you've got to smelt it. You can smelt it with wood or you can smelt it with coal. No-one on earth would smelt it with electricity, but, in any event, that worsens your problem. It is not carbon neutral. The proposals put forward by my worthy colleagues in the Greens, by myself and by many other crossbenchers are sensible proposals to lower it dramatically, but there is no way that I am going to stand aside and watch my friends, my relatives and members of my staff have their entire lives destroyed by closing down the Australian coal industry.

I'm sorry to have to give the parliament the bad news, but, thanks to your stupid free-market policies, we only have three sources of income. Thanks to your stupid policies, you gave all the income from gas away, so one of them is gone. The three of them, last time I looked, were worth about $120 billion each. The next thing down may be aluminium, cattle or gold. They're worth about $16 billion. You've only got three sources of income from overseas, and you gave one away. Now you want to do away with another one. I don't know how you're going to buy everything from overseas. This place decided that we're free-market, and, in fairness to the Greens, they've never been for that. They've always been on the right side of the fence as far as I'm concerned on these issues, but the mainstream parties gave it all away. We have to buy everything from overseas. We don't produce cars. We don't produce fuel. We don't produce household appliances. We don't produce about half the stuff you need to build a house; it comes from overseas. If the government proceeds with the current legislation, that will close down the steel and aluminium industries in Australia. Both will be gone.

You can shake your head as much as you like, but if you were running an iron industry in Australia you would know that the cost of producing steel is the cost of energy, and you're going to double the cost of energy—no, don't shake your head, because you've got the graphs. Don't lie to the parliament. You've got the graphs and you have seen how the price of electricity has doubled. You can go down to the library and get the pricing if you like. What tripled it was your free-market policies. That tripled the price of energy. In Queensland, for eight years it was $670; you free-marketed it and it went to $1,500. Now it's gone to $3,000, thanks to your greenie advocates. There are a lot of old people that can't switch the lights on anymore thanks to your environmental policies. But you've got to go to empirical evidence. I have great respect for the Greens these days. They are one party that is not part of the corporate paradigm of power. They are one party that is not in the pockets of the paradigms of power. The big parties most certainly are. But, with all due respect, give us empirical evidence, please. You can have your scientific theory, but you've got to have empirical evidence. At the Gold Coast, the beach is exactly where it was 70 or 80 years ago. (Time expired)

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The IPCC report out today reaffirms something yet again. For those of us who have been reading these reports for many years, this comes as no surprise, because report after report after report has made the same point, with increasing degrees of urgency to the plea. This report makes it clear that we have agency and urgency—agency because it is not too late to hold the world as close as possible to a 1.5-degree rise, but urgency because we must move now. The best time to move was 20 years ago. The second-best time to move is now. And the parliament has an opportunity to make that move this week. The parliament has an opportunity, for the first time in a decade, to put a measure in place to reduce emissions from our biggest emitters. That is the choice facing the parliament this week. This is a big choice for the parliament. The parliament can seize this opportunity or squander this opportunity. That is the choice before the parliament this week.

Last year we had a debate in this House about targets. The parliament agreed with us on a 43 per cent target. Some honourable members said that target should be higher. I understood that and understand that and respect that. We all agreed it was a floor, not a ceiling. That's what we all agreed: it was a floor, not a ceiling. But our projections tell us: unless the parliament passes the safeguard reforms, our projections will be for 35 per cent, not 43. So those honourable members who argued for more, who said that target should be higher, have a choice to make this week. If you vote against the safeguard mechanism, you are voting for a lower outcome, you are voting against achieving a 43 per cent emissions reduction.

These are the stakes. There are 205 million tonnes of emissions, between now and 2030, at stake in this vote. That is the equivalent of taking two-thirds of the cars off Australia's roads. That's what we're talking about in this parliament this week. Honourable members—the Leader of the Greens and others—have talked about fossil fuels. Well, fossil fuels covered under the safeguard mechanism emit, currently, 73 million tonnes a year. Projections tell us that, without reform, without a change of policy, this will grow to 83 million tonnes, but, with a change of policy, it will be a net 52 million tonnes. That's the question facing the parliament. It's a 205-million-tonne question facing this parliament as to whether we pass these reforms or not. That is the choice facing this parliament.

The same goes for new facilities. I want to see a regime in place which covers all new facilities, which covers industrial facilities, which covers resources, which covers them all, because, if the safeguard reforms do not pass, there will be no regime that encourages emissions reduction. New proposals, regardless of what they are, will be able to be developed. There will be no regime in place to require an emissions reduction regime. What we're talking about is putting a framework in place for that investment that is so necessary, that business has been crying out for for the last decade. Business have been asking for it, saying, 'We want to see emissions come down, but we need a framework to invest in that emissions reduction.' This government is prepared to give them that. The question is: is the parliament? That is the choice facing this parliament in this sitting fortnight.

Will we grasp that nettle? Will we give Australians the action on climate that they voted for last May? Will parties of goodwill and good faith come together to work together to deliver that or will they not? If honourable members call for higher targets and say 43 per cent is not enough, there is an obligation on them to vote for policies which achieve emissions reduction, even if they're not, from their point of view, 100 per cent perfect, even if they're not what they would design. There is a choice before the parliament. No member can criticise this government on targets if they then vote against policies to achieve emissions reduction. No member can do that. I don't care what seat they represent or what party they represent. They cannot criticise this government about emissions reductions targets and say that they're not good enough if they then come in here and vote against policies to achieve emissions reduction. That is not an acceptable outcome.

This government will continue to work in good faith and in goodwill with parties and individuals of good faith and goodwill. We'll continue to work together to make sure that the perfect is not the enemy of the good. But we will stand by the policies we took to the election. We will implement policies in line with our agenda and our mandate. Those policies are emissions reduction. If this parliament doesn't want emissions reduction, if this parliament wants to vote against policies for emission reduction, that will happen. If they want to vote for policies for emissions reduction, then the country will be the beneficiary. The planet will be the beneficiary. We will see jobs created across our country, particularly in Australia's regions. This country, after a decade of denial and delay, a decade of dysfunction, can finally grasp at nil. That's the choice before the parliament that we'll be putting to the parliament in this sitting fortnight. That's the choice available to honourable members.

I feel some confidence the parliament won't squander that opportunity. I feel some confidence that after a decade the parliament will recognise that it's time to come together and take that step forward. They say 35 per cent emissions reduction is not enough. If you think that 43 is not enough, then 35 is certainly not enough. Honourable members who vote for a 35 per cent emissions reduction because they throw out the safeguard reforms, if that is what they choose to do, will be making that choice. I don't think that is what the Australian people voted for last May. I think the Australian people voted for people of goodwill and progress to make progress. This parliament has a choice: make a point or make progress. I want to make progress. If others choose to make a point, that is a matter for them.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the debate has concluded. The question is that the motion be disagreed to. A division is required. In accordance with standing order 133, the division which has been called for to be required is deferred until after the discussion of the matter of public importance. The debate on this item is therefore adjourned until that time.