Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this urgency motion calling for a moratorium on new coal, oil and gas projects. We are in a climate crisis. There is no way around this, and coal and gas are the leading causes of climate change. This is not just the opinion of the Australian Greens. This is actually detailed in the IPCC report. The science is perfectly clear, and every tonne of coal and gas burned increases the intensity and the speed of changes to the climate. Across Australia, there is a climate crisis. It's caused by the mining and burning of coal and gas. The continued mining and burning of coal and gas is causing more frequent floods, heatwaves and bushfires that we are watching in real time. And, unfortunately, it's costing lives.

In my home state of Western Australia, we know this all too well. Over the summer, we experienced record-breaking heatwaves and devastating bushfires. Those heatwaves were both in Perth and in the Pilbara region, and we watched those bushfires in real time in the South West. Parts of this beautiful country are now becoming unlivable due to the extreme temperatures, and I wish other senators had hung around for this detail: in Fitzroy Crossing, in Western Australia, currently they experience 67 days per year over 40 degrees. If we are to stay on track with either the government's policies or the opposition's policies, by 2050 they'll be experiencing 155 days over 40 degrees, which is basically unlivable.

We need real climate action now. We need real climate action, meaning phasing out coal and gas by 2030 and keeping climate-destroying coal and gas in the ground, where they belong. Real climate action means banning new coal and gas projects and stopping the gaslighting that is happening—the false narrative that is being created by this government. Real climate action means protecting our environment for future generations, both mine and yours.

The burning question here is: what's stopping the Liberals and Labor from taking action on climate change? Well, it's no secret that both the Liberals and Labor take millions of dollars of donations from coal and gas billionaires and big corporations. So this is for the folks out there watching, the Australian public. In fact, in every budget, the government slips into the books billions more of your taxes, earmarked for coal and gas corporations. From these tax breaks that they give to those billionaires and big corporations, they give handouts. They spend public money on making the greatest challenge that we face far worse by backing more coal and gas projects across this country. So you won't hear Labor criticise the Liberals' fossil fuel handouts, which is why only putting the Greens in the balance of power will stop the pouring of more fuel onto the climate fire.

Dirty donations explain why the Labor Party is also giving the green light to climate-wrecking projects like the one that's operating in my backyard in Western Australia: the Scarborough project, on the lands of the Murujuga people. The Scarborough gas project is a climate bomb and will create pollution equalling that of 15 coal-fired power stations every single year. It's worse than Adani. In fact, it will be like Juukan 2.0. This federal government, as well as the state government, claim that major oil and gas projects like Scarborough will create jobs. But what they won't tell you is that, in WA, their workforce in fact does not create jobs for Western Australians. They would be better off supporting literally any other industry, because it's less than one per cent of WA's workforce.

Political capture by the big coal and gas corporations through donations, through that revolving door of lobbyists and through job offers and well-funded disinformation campaigns continues to see the Labor and Liberal parties throw money at their incumbent fossil fuel companies, all at the expense of slowing down that ever-present transition that we need to make. I'm proud to be from the only party that doesn't take money from the fossil fuel industry or big corporations, because we won't take money from the Woodsides and Rio Tintos of this world.

The Greens have a plan for real action on climate change, but the only way we can do that is to kick the Liberals out and to push a Labor government further and faster on climate action, by voting 1 for the Greens. A small change in the vote can put the Greens into shared power again so we can push Labor to go further and faster on tackling the climate crisis and making those billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax so that we can get money back into our community services, where it's needed. In shared power, we can tackle the climate crisis, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and making those corporations pay their fair share of tax so we can create a safer future for all of us. We can power a clean energy revolution that, again, will create all of those long-term jobs, enabling our workers in fossil fuel industries to transition away from polluting industries. We know the Labor Party—