Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great honour and a privilege to stand here today as a re-elected Greens senator for Queensland and as the fifth parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens. I'd like to start by acknowledging the First Nations owners of this land, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. Wherever we are in this nation, we're living and working on stolen land; it's unceded land. We've got a long way to go before we can achieve any semblance of First Nations justice, which is sorely needed.

It's been 34 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and we haven't seen all of the recommendations implemented. Earlier this month, the Northern Territory coroner handed down her findings in the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker. My heart remains with his family and the community of Yuendumu, who endured more than five years of pain and unanswered questions. First Nations kids are 26 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous kids are. First Nations women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised for violence than non-Indigenous Australians are. It's 2025, and we still don't have a truth-telling process in this country. The Voice referendum campaign clearly showed that there is a compelling case for truth-telling and treatymaking to deliver hope and justice and pathways towards healing for this ancient nation.

We're at a precipice as a nation and as a planet. We're facing concurrent crises that will impact us for generations if we don't make changes here and now. We know the climate and environment crisis is the defining issue of our generation. The climate wars were supposed to be over, but the major parties just can't stop approving coal and gas projects. I know I wasn't the only one who was disappointed when the newly re-elected Labor government kicked off its second term with the approval of Woodside's disastrous North West Shelf gas plant expansion.

Woodside's North West Shelf project will release more carbon pollution each year than all of Australia's coal-fired power stations combined and it will now run for 45 more years. This approval will haunt future generations. Approving fossil fuel usage out to 2070 will haunt future generations. Young people today are seeing the climate crisis getting worse, and they're worried about their future, but Labor's North West Shelf project will be heating the planet until 2070—long after their grandkids are born. But it is never too late to make positive change, and, with the coalition in the electoral weeds, arguing about whether or not to even have a net zero 2050 target, there has never been a better time to be ambitious.

Labor have got a large majority in the other place and they've got our support here in this chamber to take real action to protect the climate and to protect the environment. The Greens have made it clear we want to see meaningful climate action in this term of government. That's why the first thing we did this morning was put forward a bill for a climate trigger to force Labor to consider the climate impacts of fossil fuel projects. If passed, the bill would automatically reject climate bombs like Woodside's North West Shelf project and the Beetaloo gas project. Right now, the government can completely ignore climate impacts when it's approving new coal and gas projects or any other project.

The Greens have been put in the balance of power to get stuff done, and the Prime Minister knows that Australians want climate action. Nature cannot be put last like it has been for so long, and a really easy first step is to stop approving coal and gas projects. Right now, in South Australia, we're seeing the devastating impacts of a marine heatwave caused by climate change. An area twice the size of the ACT is now being choked by a toxic algal bloom that has killed tens of thousands of marine animals. Beaches are shut down—it's been happening for months, and scientists have warned us that this would happen. Now the crisis is here, and there's no end in sight. Coal- and gas-fuelled climate change is strangling the planet, communities and wildlife now.

This past May, four people lost their lives in devastating flooding in northern New South Wales. In Victoria, farmers are facing a nervous wait to see if the recent rains will continue and break the months-long drought in north-western Victoria, south-western Gippsland and north-central Victoria. In Queensland, my home state, on the Great Barrier Reef, scientists from JCU and Griffith University have found that 96 per cent of Lizard Island's reefs were impacted by mass bleaching in 2024 and only eight per cent of the affected corals survived. At the end of the country, the Great Southern Reef's kelp forests are quickly disappearing. There were once vast and thick underwater forests, but only five per cent of giant kelp forests remain—again, due to warmer waters caused by the climate crisis fuelled by coal and gas. How many canaries in the coalmine do we need before we start paying attention?

Alongside the climate and environment crisis, we're witnessing a housing crisis that has turned homeownership into a moneymaking scheme for already wealthy investors. Housing is a human right; it is not a commodity. The housing and rental crisis is deeply unfair and needs serious action. Everyone should be able to have an affordable, quality and secure home, and it is deeply unfair that an entire generation is locked out. Young people are living in fear of their next rent increase. They're avoiding reporting maintenance issues, because their landlords will end the lease or up the rent. Their only avenue to homeownership shouldn't be to rely on either asking the bank of mum or dad or receiving an inheritance.

This experience is particularly galling when we continue to hand out billions in perks to property investors, in the form of negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. It would be a lot easier to buy your first home if the government weren't giving massive tax discounts to wealthy property investors. There are now 150 billionaires in this country, and one-third of big corporations pay no tax. Why should a nurse pay more tax than a multinational gas company? By making big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share, we can bring down the cost of living, we can reduce inequality and we can make life better for millions of people.

In my very first speech to the Senate, I said:

It is with a big heart and a passionate belief in the goodness of humanity that I undertake this journey.

That is still true. I want to see this become our most progressive parliament and show people that we can do politics with heart. People expect a parliament that works together to genuinely tackle the issues that we're all facing, because people need and deserve more than just tinkering. We're in an epidemic of violence against women and yet frontline support services are still not fully funded to help everyone who seeks help. The government could readily fix that. Successive Australian governments have underfunded services, and those services could save lives. Stopping all forms of violence against women will take systemic action to tackle the root causes and to transform the harmful social norms, but it also requires adequate funding of the organisations that do the hard work on the frontlines. While this government has made some progress, it is yet to commit to fully funding frontline prevention and response services that support women and children experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence. In a wealthy country like ours, it is obscene that women and children escaping violence could be turned away when seeking help, or forced to choose between staying in an unsafe relationship and living in their car or a tent, but that is the reality of what this funding shortfall means for people.

The Greens are ready to work together to transform people's lives for the better and to deliver real outcomes for people and the planet. We will continue to hold true to our values and work for peace, human rights, and social and economic justice, as we always have, and that includes a free Palestine. Like many people across the country, I have watched in horror as a genocide has unfolded on my phone screen. It has been difficult for me to understand how anyone in this place or outside it can see that and do nothing, say nothing. The Greens continue to respond to these horrors with compassion, with honesty and with a fierce determination to achieve a just and lasting peace. For there to be a peace, there must be an end to the State of Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and its ongoing genocide in Gaza. In recent weeks we've seen repeated humanitarian outrage, including 93 people killed in Gaza trying to access food, and UNRWA warns that Israeli authorities are starving civilians, including one million children.

Finally, after almost two years of this devastating conflict and continuing genocide, we saw our government join with other nations to demand an immediate end to the war in Gaza and for Israel to lift aid restrictions. That is a good thing, but the Israeli regime is not listening to stern words. We must sanction the Netanyahu government, end the two-way arms trade with Israel and get aid into Gaza immediately. Human rights matter. They must be respected and protected in all countries and for all people.

Our humanitarian obligations here in this place must also ensure that we're upholding our obligations to protect and promote the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and people who are stateless. In a country like ours, which has been built on immigration, we should take pride in our multicultural and migrant communities, but in the last parliament we saw both of the major parties demonise migrants and use them to distract from their own failings. The Greens remain steadfast in our calls for the elimination of mandatory and indefinite detention, and the abolition of offshore processing and other forms of punitive and discriminatory treatment. This is our time to make it happen.

At this election, like the one before it, people elected a balance-of-power Senate. It also continued the long-term trend of a collapse in support for the major parties. This Senate has been given a mandate by the Australian people to carefully scrutinise legislation, and that is what we intend to do. We need to address the inequality and cost-of-living crisis with real investment in world-class health, education and social services to make sure that no-one lives in poverty or insecurity. I know, as a mum to two marvellous children, that this will make life better for millions of people, and I want to leave this place knowing that I did everything possible to make that happen, knowing that I'm leaving the world a better place for them.

In this parliament, Labor can't pass any legislation without working either with the Greens or with the Liberals, and we know that the coalition will drag us backwards. We want Labor to be bold and to take this opportunity to make changes that really help people. I fear they won't do this without us pushing them, but I do come into this new parliament hopeful. This is a huge opportunity. Voters across this country have delivered the Greens the sole balance of power in the Senate, which gives the government a clear pathway to pass truly progressive reforms. We can make positive change. We can pass progressive reform to make this a kinder, fairer, more equitable, more sustainable place to live. We are urging the government to take this opportunity to be brave. This government has the pathway they need to do good things. They just need to have a little courage.

We can get dental into Medicare. We could wipe student debt in its entirety, not just 20 per cent of it, or eight per cent once you factor in the indexation. We could make child care free. We could end native forest logging and save what's left of the Great Barrier Reef. We could build public housing. We could make big corporations pay their fair share so that we could do all of those things and more. The only thing that could stand in the way is timidity by the Labor government. If we can't achieve these really very basic things, it will be because the government lacks the courage to face down their big corporate donors and the many lobbyists haunting the halls of this place.

People want a democracy that works for them, not one that delivers for vested interests. It is our shared responsibility in this parliament to deliver real reform that will help people in their daily lives and protect the planet. On behalf of two million people who voted Greens, we will fight to make sure our kids have a safe climate future and can afford a roof over their heads. We will fight for the millions of people who put the Greens in this important position and who have given us a mandate to hold the major parties to account and to push for outcomes and for politics with heart.