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

It has been almost a decade since we have had meaningful federal climate policy in this country. In that time we have lived through fires, we have lived through floods and we have endured heatwaves of intensifying frequency and on unimaginable scales—all of our own making. And by our own making we must now urgently take action on climate change—the action that the public has demanded that we take, after the 10 thirsty years we have endured, all of us withered in the parched wasteland of climate policy, desperately calling for the government to act. Thrust into this very position of action, we find that the best that the Albanese government can offer the community, the student strikers, the doctors, the industry experts, the activists, those championing renewable energy that are demanding, that are so desperately hoping for, urgent action to address the climate crisis is a flimsy 43 per cent emissions reduction target that would be delivered too late to matter. This bill as has been passed through the House does not by any imagination, by any attempt to stretch the truth or the science, go far enough to address the unravelling climate crisis that our community faces. This bill is the policy equivalent of pushing the food around the plate to make the illusion that you have eaten.

We know precisely why the Albanese government has stopped so far short of the targets that we know are needed within this bill to address the climate crisis. It is not because there is any doubt around the veracity of these targets or their urgently needed nature. It is not because they would destroy the economy or pause the power industry or any other of the litany of feculent excuses that the government uses to muddy the rising waters—the reality around us. It is plainly because their fossil fuel paymasters, their corporate overlords, have said so. This is why the Albanese government last month opened up 50,000 new square kilometres of ocean and land to gas and oil exploration—50,000 kilometres! And yet in making the case for this piece of legislation, the Albanese government looks the community in the eye, looks the climate strikers in the eye, looks at the members of extinction rebellion and of so many other organisations coming together to campaign for climate action in the eye and says that this is action, while in the next breath is opening up new coal and gas projects. It would be funny if it wasn't so cruel.

The persistence of the fiction of Australian clean coal, this great technological delusion, has captured Australian politics for so long because it is so convenient to the donors, particularly the political parties that accept donations from the fossil fuel industry. It is why this government sits here in support of the Scarborough gas project, of the opening up of the development of the Beetaloo basin. They have refused to rule out supporting new fossil fuel projects, as long as they stack up environmentally. I mean, give us a break. It is like endorsing asbestos, as long as it doesn't cause mesothelioma. It is like endorsing great plagues of mosquitoes, as long as they don't spread malaria. It is an absolute insult to the intelligence of the Australian public to suggest that the government could be taken seriously when suggesting it is acting on climate change while at the same time proposing to open up the Scarborough gas fields, to open the Beetaloo basin.

Last week the Senate committee inquiry report into this bill revealed to the public what the community have well long known: new coal and gas developments are fundamentally inconsistent with Australia's climate obligations. The world's two leading authorities on the issue, the International Energy Agency and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphatically agree that not a single one of these projects stacks up if the object is to act on climate change. What that means is that the bill, as passed by the House and delivered to us in the Senate, categorically and objectively is not good enough. It does not stack up. However convenient it might be for members of this place to delude themselves that this bill goes far enough, it does not.

The Greens amendments that we will bring into this chamber are in line with the very bare minimum that we need to meaningfully mitigate catastrophic climate change. The bare minimum means—and say it with me, folks—a moratorium on new coal and gas. That is why the Greens are proposing amendments to the emissions reduction target of at least 75 per cent—not 43 per cent—by 2030. It means that net zero needs to be achieved by 2035, not by 2050. And they will mean working towards reaching negative emissions thereafter. These sets of amendments which we shall bring, as I say—this is not the ceiling. This is not the astronomical height of human ambition. This is not the legislative equivalent of the Apollo program. This is the bare minimum. This is, for the young people of this country, a fighting chance, the opportunity to have, for their generation, the ability to live in a community that is not constantly battling climate crisis after climate crisis.

I was meeting with the Australian Red Cross just yesterday, and they were talking to me about the structural challenges that their organisation faces. They're a primary auxiliary component to Australia's disaster relief program, and do you know what is one of the main things they're facing, one of the main realities they're facing now? They were designed for a period of time when the Red Cross's disaster relief lasted for months. They have been in constant disaster support mode for nearly four years now, as constant natural disaster has followed continual natural disaster.

There may be some of the coal-powered ghouls in this place that mock the amendments, dismiss the amendments brought by the Greens to this legislation as a half-baked lefty fantasy. I can see it now—the tweets are writing themselves in the offices of the National Party, the Liberal Party and, I am sure, in some right-wing sections of the Labor Party as well. But let us make no mistake: a 75 per cent emissions reduction by 2055 is backed by unequivocal, unanimous, global scientific consensus—global scientific consensus. There is no confusion. There is no debate. This is what is needed for our species to survive, and, if we cannot get this right, we have no business taking seats in this place.

The Greens have long been the lone voice in this place calling for climate action—actual climate action. It is the Greens who agitated for what became the Clean Energy Act of 2011, which successfully reduced carbon emissions before the coalition government repealed them in 2014. And now once again it is the Greens who will seek to legislate strong climate policy in this country. By supporting this bill as put to us in the house, particularly in the absence of the critical amendments that we have tabled in this chamber, the Greens have shown our willingness to work with the parliament on this issue in the interests of just bloody getting on with it, of clearing a path for all of us to engage in the real work that must follow. The Australian public sent us a clear message at the May election: take action on climate change, and take it now. This is our mandate. This is our solemn sworn duty. This is our opportunity. This is our survival.