Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The choice which has been put before this chamber tonight by the Greens is a simple one: join with the community and join with the experts—the scientists, the nurses, the teachers and the students—in acknowledging that which is true, that there is an indisputable link between the burning of coal, the burning of gas and the burning of oil and the climate crisis which now grips our nation. The Greens are asking this chamber and the major parties within it to work with community and to heed that demand for action in creating a plan which removes from our community the dirt, the filth and the fossil fuels that are so choking us.

That is a simple request, and yet what we have seen during the course of this debate is nothing less than spin, self-interested one-liners, howls of derision and the quoting of pseudoscience in the face of reality. We have seen nothing but low politics play out in this chamber this evening, and our communities are demanding high action. They will be looking to this place and asking themselves, 'Why?' Why in the face of 3,000 homes lost, why in the face of a billion animals lost and why in the face of 33 lives lost can this chamber not recognise that which is immutably true? Climate change is driving this disaster, and the burning of fossil fuels is driving climate change.

The answer is as simple as it is terrifying and terrible. It's money—dirty money—from coal, from oil and from gas. It is from the people who are making billions as our towns burn. They donated a million bucks—$500,000 to each side of this chamber—in the lead-up to the federal election in the full knowledge that it would buy them the government, whoever won. In the years from 2012 they have donated more than $100 million to both sides. That corruption and that complicity have leached out from this place across the nation: down to Tasmania, where the Liberals try to trash the forests; up to Queensland, where the Labor Party want to dig up Adani and sell it to the world; and across to Western Australia, where the Labor Premier, Mark McGowan, is seeking to open up the North West Shelf, a gas project which would contribute more to the global emissions of this country than the entire Adani project. This corruption leaks out across our community, across our nation, and binds the major parties together in a mutual pact of destruction—a mutual pact which says: 'Whatever happens, however many die, whatever the suffering, we shall continue to allow to you trash our planet. We shall continue to allow you to pollute as long as you fill our back pockets with the money we need to keep our position of power.'

This low, cynical politics, this cowardice, is why the Australian people look to this house in contempt. They hold the Prime Minister in contempt. They hold the opposition leader in contempt. They see what is being done here. They know the decisions that are being made. They know that their kids' lives, that their families, are being sold out to the highest bidder, and they are revolted by it. They have gathered here in their thousands, in the weeks after some of the worst disasters ever to grip this country, to demand action. Your response is to turn them away and make excuses for your inaction. Shame on the lot of you! The damage is on your hands. The lives are on your hands. Good luck sleeping at night.