Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

Stopping Adani's Carmichael coal mine, which would pose no sovereign risk to Australia, and the need to show leadership to address the great challenge of climate change.

We are at a critical moment in human history. We are facing a test of our collective intelligence in the face of a threat to the existence of all life on Earth. We now know beyond any doubt that opening up new coalmines, new fossil fuel reserves like the Adani megamine will result in devastating climate damage and will result in a legacy left to future generations that no responsible community would inflict upon them. We know that we have, right now, the opportunity to stop this mine going ahead. Of course, the Liberal Party, dominated by climate deniers, are showing no signs of rising to the challenge that lies ahead of us. We know that both parties receive massive donations from the coal, oil and gas industries, and so we are not seeing the leadership that we should be seeing, not just here in Australia but on the international stage, from our parliamentarians.

The Labor Party say that they can't act, but we know the opposite is true. We know that if Bill Shorten said there was going to be a review of our environmental approvals, it would send a very clear and direct message to the Adani corporation. We know that if Bill Shorten and the Labor Party were to support our bill to prevent another new coalmine from ever opening up in Australia, that would be the end of this project; instead, they don't. They don't join with us and with so many Australian people like the young people who came to the parliament today to exercise their democratic right to protest against this megamine going ahead. They don't do it, and they cite the notion of sovereign risk as a reason for not being able to stop this mine. Well, what a lot of garbage! What a lot of rubbish! What a meaningless, hollowed-out term 'sovereign risk' is. It is thrown around by political parties who don't have the guts to take a stand when it really matters.

You see, investor uncertainty always exists when it comes to a project like this one. Go and have a look at the foreign oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria or Russia or Turkmenistan or a dozen other countries with huge resources but very little rule of law and tell me that stopping a coalmine here in Australia is somehow going to drive investors away from investing in our shores. What nonsense. What garbage. No-one seriously believes that, if we were to tighten up our regulations around digging coal, around burning coal, it somehow would pose a threat to other operations in this country.

You see, risk is an inherent part of a capitalist system—the bigger the risk, the bigger the return. That is never truer than in the mining industry. In the mining industry, the huge rates of return come because there is risk associated with those projects. That is part of the reason why mining companies are so profitable, because they live with that risk every day. Governments pass laws all the time that outlaw the mining or production of hazardous materials. We are not re-inventing the wheel here. We didn't pay compensation to companies when we decided that asbestos was killing people, and we stopped it. We didn't compensate tobacco companies when we passed laws that said that we weren't going to allow tobacco to be consumed in the way it was previously consumed. We don't need to pay compensation. We are not creating any additional risk by stating the bleeding obvious. In fact, what we are doing is sending a very clear signal to other companies who are looking to invest in other areas or sectors that are harmful to our health.

We want to discourage companies from investing in businesses that harm the community. This is the right signal to be sending to the coal industry. Adani didn't just learn today that coal was harmful. We have known that for decades. The truth is that we need to come together as a nation and say, 'Your industry is now doing harm and it is time to stop it, to end it.' We don't see the action we need to see, because we see those millions of dollars flow into the coffers of both major parties. We see the Liberal Party dominated by climate deniers. Here we are, the first generation to feel the effects of climate change, the last generation to do something about it, and we are squibbing it. We have stop this megamine from going ahead.