Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in favour of the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. I was elected with a crystal clear mandate from South Australians to get action on climate change, and it's the reason that I'm here. South Australians are already feeling the devastating impacts of the climate crisis. In the summer of 2019-20 we experienced the Black Summer bushfires. They destroyed 196 homes. They injured our frontline responders, including firefighters, and tragically they took the lives of three people. These are our families, our friends and our loved ones. The fires also impacted our environment. They burned about 280,000 hectares, they damaged 17 national parks. Close to 70,000 livestock were killed and 40,000 to 50,000 of our beloved koalas.

Every year we're experiencing worsening heatwaves and droughts, which are forecast to increase in intensity as the planet heats up. This affects the health of South Australians, particularly those who are most vulnerable, including our older people. It threatens our livelihoods and all the things we love most about our state and our country. It impacts our farmers, food production, the Murray River and our world-class wine industry. Many South Australians live on or enjoy our beautiful coast, but rising sea levels are forecast to put thousands of homes at risk of flooding towards the end of the century. And, of course, we're witnessing an international crisis around climate change that affects not only our beautiful state and country, but is imposing terrible costs on the people of Pakistan—and many other countries.

These impacts are felt by everyone but they are not felt equally by everyone. We know that climate change is having the worst impacts on those who are most vulnerable. We see this with the recent economic shocks caused in part by climate change: inflation from supply-side shocks. This has affected South Australians already struggling to make ends meet. It's affected the most vulnerable first and worst.

Above all, we need to think about our young people: South Australian young people, our kids and their children to come who don't yet have a vote or a voice. They'll be most impacted by the action or lack of action that we choose to take here in Canberra. Any decisions we make need to first and foremost consider them. I'm constantly inspired by the activism and the active hope of young people, of schoolkids, in our state. I joined the school strike for climate action not so long ago, and the young people there were calling for three things: an end to coal and gas; a move to 100 per cent renewable energy generation as quickly as possible, and certainly by 2030; and funding of a just transition for all those who work and live in our communities where fossil fuel is a major area of economic activity.

I'm also inspired by the farmers, the agronomists, the scientists and the engineers, who are working hard to adapt to the impact of rising temperatures, changing patterns of rainfall and diminished rainfall. They are working so hard to adapt our food production and our transport systems and to make the changes that we know we must make.

As I said in my first speech, I ran for the Senate because I made the mistake of reading the 2018 IPCC report and listening to the scientists studying climate change just as I was asked to think about coming here. I'm here so that I can look future generations in the eye and say that I, with my colleagues, did everything I could.

South Australians have made this clear too. In polling conducted just before the federal election, a clear majority of South Australians indicated that change on climate action was a most important factor in deciding their vote. A clear majority indicated that the federal government needed to do more to address climate action, and we saw these results across our state, in the city and throughout our regions. In the polls and on the street, people were calling for urgent action to reach net zero emissions and to make sure we don't allow any more new coal or gas mines or coal-fired power stations, which only add to the crisis we face.

South Australians know that a cleaner, greener future lies ahead and is possible. Our state has led the way with a renewable energy transformation. We switched off the last coal-fired power station in 2016, and at least 60 per cent of our electricity is now generated by renewables, making us second only to Tasmania. Last year, renewable energy generation exceeded demand in South Australia for 180 days.

We know the solutions on climate change and we've got the tools we need to implement them. South Australians are clear. Our Pacific neighbours are clear. The science is clear. We must stop opening new coal and gas fields. We must put the future of our kids before the interests of a small group of fossil fuel profiteers—mostly foreign owned and paying too little tax—who are determined to wring their last fortunes out of fossil fuel extraction while putting our future at risk. We must restore confidence in our democracy by excluding fossil fuel money from politics and rooting out corruption.

This bill represents a first step. It's not enough. We need to move faster and further than this bill allows. The ratchet mechanism secured by the Greens means the target can be increased over time and won't go backwards, but we need more. We've already reached one degree of warming. South Australians and people across our country and the world are already experiencing the effects of this, including loss of livelihoods and lives.

If we want to make a tangible difference, this bill must be followed by strong action. We need to end all new coal and gas projects. We need to legislate a climate trigger to ensure that new emissions-intensive projects do not blow Australia's remaining and rapidly diminishing carbon budget. We need to increase our national targets to align with 1.5 degrees of warming and, most importantly, we need to make sure no-one is left behind in our transition.

This is why the Greens are calling for the implementation of a transition authority to support coal and gas communities, as well as advocating for women and First Nations people to get a fair share of the jobs that are emerging in this new and growing economy. Labor cannot claim to take climate action seriously while backing new coal and gas. It just does not stack up. We know the transition to a low-carbon economy has to happen. The question is when. South Australians elected me because they want to see real action now. They know a cleaner, greener future is possible, because we're already leading the way. It's time for Labor to catch up. It's time to get it done.