Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If you want to know how much the world's changed recently, consider this: last month, the International Energy Agency released its Net zero by 2050 road map, and, at the launch, the head of the IEA said this:

If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now—from this year

There it is, clear as day, in black and white. Remember, the IEA were basically formed in 1974 to ensure the security of global oil supplies. Basically, for the best part of the last 50 years, they've been part of the fossil fuel lobby, and here they are saying clear as day: 'No fossil fuels. They are done. They are over. We're living in a climate emergency. We need to change course, and we need to change course now.'

This is the rational response of most of the rest of the world. In the face of an existential crisis, the world is choosing survival. It's common sense, right? Well, wrong—not here in Australia and not for this government. No, this government is happy to choose the apocalypse. While the rest of the world is going the other way, this government—with plenty of support, I might add, from its mates in the Labor Party—is trying to turn Australia into a petro-state, and a big part of their petro-dreaming is the plan to open up the Beetaloo Basin. This one gas field, the biggest in the country, would see the release of up to 34 billion tonnes of carbon pollution—the equivalent of 68 years of Australia's current annual carbon emissions. Why is this government apparently so hell-bent on cooking the planet? It's because there's big money to be made in cooking the planet and there's big money to be made in cooking the planet from the people who are donating big money to the LNP.

Over the last decade, companies involved in Beetaloo have donated—wait for it!—$1.4 billion to this government and, by the way, nearly another billion dollars to the Labor Party. Those companies don't care about the future. All they want now is to squeeze another decade or two of obscene profits out of pillaging the earth and cooking our planet. What comes after is somebody else's problem, according to them. Their view is: pay off the pollies and party while the world burns. This is debased politics. It's a stain on our nation. It is utter, utter madness. Let's not forget that the oil and gas behemoths who will profit from this madness—among them Santos and Origin—are also systematic and serial tax avoiders. How does the government treat serial and systematic tax avoiders? By pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into their latest planet-cooking venture. That's how the government treats them. This government has tipped over $220 million into Unlocking the Beetaloo so that the big corporations and the billionaires who have already got obscenely rich from cooking the planet while paying next to no tax can get even richer while continuing to pay no tax and cooking the planet even faster. It's morally bankrupt, it's economically irresponsible, it's planet destroying and it's stealing the future from our children and our grandchildren. Congratulations, everyone!