Senate debates

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

Adjournment

Women's Health Week, National Summit on Women's Safety

7:40 pm

Photo of Mehreen FaruqiMehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The problem we have is that the two big parties, Liberal and Labor, are also united in an opposite quest. Driven by their donors in the fossil fuel industry, they refuse to break ties with outdated, redundant and dirty energy sources. It really does boggle the mind that in a climate crisis, when a majority of people are demanding action, both Liberal and Labor want more coal and gas. They don't want to clean up the influence of money in politics, because it would ruin their business model. The road to Glasgow should be paved with solar panels, but I fear, with Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce at the helm of our government, this is a pipedream. Crowing about emissions reductions during COVID-19 when the country is shut down and at a standstill is as ridiculous as it is misleading. A pandemic is not a climate strategy.

I can tell you this: political parties and politicians who ignore their communities and constituents do so at their own peril. People have had it up to here with career politicians whose only goal is to cling onto power by hook or by crook and who, in this pursuit, steamroll over the wishes of the community. People are tired of being taken for granted. More and more are waking up to the fact that politics is not just the domain of parliamentarians.

I meet these people every single day. Their activism and organising is what will get the action that we need. I met with them in Berrima, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, where their 10-year-long struggle has just blocked plans for a new coalmine. I've stood with them in Breeza, where their relentless 13-year campaign has ended with the cancellation of the Shenhua Watermark coalmine. I have joined them in Bentley, where their blockades saved their land and water from coal seam gas fracking. Even though the choice to destroy our planet is a political decision made time and time again by self-serving politicians and destructive corporations seeking endless power and profits, it gives me great hope to see communities forging ahead and winning, because, no matter how out of touch politicians in this place are, out there the people know change is possible when we fight for it. And, by God, people are fighting, and we are winning.

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