Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land and all the lands of this nation, and acknowledge that it is high time that we made progress on the constitutional recognition of our first people. We need to make genuine efforts to close the gap, and then we need to progress to discussing genuine sovereignty over this nation and treaties with our first people.

I am thrilled to be back here in the Senate as the first Green re-elected in the state of Queensland. I thank the many people who helped return me to this sometimes insane and diabolical place. Perhaps I have lost my mind, but I am very grateful to be here to represent the values of Queenslanders who want a fairer society, a healthy environment and an economy that thinks more than five seconds ahead. I will continue my work in this place to protect the reef from dangerous climate change, to work for equality for women, to work towards a planned transition away from fossil fuels and an embracement of clean energy that sees workers looked after rather than abandoned by those dirty industries, and of course I will work to address the growing financial inequality that is wracking many families not just in Queensland but right around the country. Now, more than ever, I will proudly be a voice against racism and divisiveness against members of our community and potential members of our community. I am perplexed by the apparent electoral attractiveness of blaming brown people for the problems of the changing economy, and I undertake to understand better and articulate better the genuine solutions needed in our changing economy and how we should look after people not just in Queensland but throughout Australia. We should always speak out against prejudice and unfounded divisiveness against other human beings.

Today I have the pleasure of speaking in response to the Governor-General's address. You have to feel for the guy—he is reading out a speech that clearly somebody else has written. It is the apparent agenda of the government, although it is pretty hard to discern an agenda amidst all of the kowtowing to big corporates. Indeed, many of the folk in this place either fell asleep or struggled to stay awake—it was narcolepsy as a service delivered by this new Turnbull government. I took particular umbrage at the many instances of hypocrisy in the speech and the many instances where the rhetoric and the buzzwords simply did not match the actions of this government. I want to go through some of those in the brief time that I have today.

The first statement, which I thought was quite outlandish, was that innovation and science are critical as Australia transitions from the mining-led boom to one driven by services, exports, innovations and technology. Yes, innovations and science are critical. So why have you cut so many scientists out of CSIRO? Why have you reduced funding for research in our university sector? Why have you cut research and development funding to the lowest level in 30 years? If innovation and science are so critical, why are you cutting $1 billion out of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency—that fantastic powerhouse of innovation that will see us usher in the next generation of clean energy technology, that will help safeguard us from the ravages of climate change, generate jobs and protect our reef? So much for innovation and science being critical.

The next point was that the government say they would like to strengthen our farming industries and they would like to deliver a fair go to farm businesses. I would love to see a fair go for farm businesses and farmers, but instead coal and coal seam gas companies are allowed to ride roughshod over their land. Farmers have no right to say no to their farmland being turned into an open-cut coalmine or being pockmarked with coal seam gas wells to poison their water, destroy their land and ruin their farm productivity and their ability to hand over that farm to future generations. I would like to put on record my immense pleasure at the moves by the Victorian state government to ban fracking, and I signalled that just yesterday when I introduced my bill again—I think it is the fourth time now—to give landholders the right to say no to coal seam gas and coal and to ban fracking. We have clean energy options which do not threaten our land and water or divide committees or threaten their health, and that is where this government should be investing. They say they want to strengthen our farming industries and support farm businesses—they should start by giving farmers some rights to protect their land against this unnecessary fossil fuel ravage.

There was also talk in the speech about being mindful of what sort of society we bequeath to future generations and about policies that improve the wellbeing and secure the future of all Australians. You would think that climate change and acting on it had quite a bit to do with the sort of world that we will leave future generations, but this government's record has been utterly woeful. They axed the carbon price and they got rid of the Climate Change Commission, which was reformed with the support of members of the public and continues to do excellent work. Instead, they have a policy called 'direct action'—if you can call it that; it is an absolute bastardisation of that term, if you ask me—which pays polluters. Rather than making polluters pay to pollute, they now get paid, and it is often to do projects that they were intending to do anyway and which were already in the pipeline. We have a target for greenhouse gas reduction that will see Australia still be the largest polluter per capita, even if we were on track to meet that weak target. So the government have utterly no credibility when it talks about safeguarding future generations.

This brings me to the Adani coalmine. So much for support for science and innovation and looking after the future generations when we have 10 projects that could be funded by the Renewable Energy Agency slated for Queensland, which would generate 2,700 jobs for Queenslanders—lasting jobs that will not kill them with black lung disease—but, instead, we have this government attempting to cut that $1 billion from ARENA. Instead, they want to prop up a coalmine—in this day and age when the global coal market has completely tanked and when the coal sector has already sacked a third of its workforce, because, clearly, the companies can see that that global trend and transition is underway.

Sadly, our government is blinded by the multimillion dollar donations that the fossil fuel companies make to it—and to the Labor Party and the National Party. Since the last election, $2.4 million flowed into the coffers of those three parties. Is it any wonder that the fossil fuel sector gets such weak laws and every single coalmine or coal seam gas proposal is ticked off on? And not only that, they get $24 billion in free public money for cheap petrol and accelerated depreciation. It is a nice, cosy, little arrangement they have going on there.

The was a brief mention of the environment in the speech. It was all about the use value of the natural world—'we will use Australia's natural resources to our best advantage'. That really spells out this government's approach to the environment. They do not understand that it is the life-support system for the planet, including for us. They have spent the entire term of their government attacking the environment and the people who stand up for it. They have attacked environment groups, launched witch-hunts into tax deductibility status and have even sought for a while to remove the rights of people to enforce environmental laws. What is the point of having a law if you do not then allow people to hold the government and big companies to that law. That was a flagrant attack on democracy and I hope we have seen the end of it. We will certainly continue to resist it in the parliament.

There is talk of improving the wellbeing of all Australians. How are they going to do that by cutting $7 a week out of the pay packets of the poorest Australians while simultaneously giving tax cuts to the biggest companies and giving tax relief to people who earn over $80,000? That is a really clear statement of whose values and whose interests are being looked after by this government. There was talk of women's participation in the workforce. I found the irony of that one quite pointed, given that, sadly, we have the lowest numbers of women in the Liberal Party in neigh on 30 years. There was also talk of domestic violence continuing to be a national priority. If this government are indeed supposed to be continuing to address domestic violence as a national priority, I look forward to the funding cuts they have wrought on legal centres, on housing shelters, on women's support services and on long-term affordable housing being overturned.

I have to say it was rather difficult to sit through the Governor-General's speech—to hear the buzzwords and the rhetoric and the talk of jobs and growth, while at the same time there are attempts to sabotage the clean energy sector, to prop up the old dirty-energy sectors, and to take money away from the poorest Australians and give tax cuts to the big corporates and those who do not need the support. It will be very interesting to see if this government discovers an actual agenda in this term of parliament—if the Prime Minister even lasts longer than five seconds. We Greens remain committed to standing up to protect the planet and to protect the interests of all Australians, now and in the future, from the wanton attacks that this government has wrought in the past few years and apparently intends to continue to wreak for the next few years.

Debate interrupted.