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

Naturally, I rise to oppose this motion. The Nationals and One Nation are now competing to see who gets to drive the clown car of climate denial. They're railing against net zero by 2050—25 years away!—when the actual scientists are saying that we need to get to net zero in 10 years time, not in 25 years time, in order to have a safe climate future. Ordinary people who are experiencing the droughts, the fires, the floods and their house insurance skyrocketing see the link between climate action and the natural disasters that are driving up the cost of living and wrecking nature. Every day that we don't act to reduce climate pollution, the more it will cost us and the harder it will be to make that transition that we need for a safe climate future. The cheapest and the most effective time to act is now.

And most farmers know that. Farmers are on the front line of the climate crisis. They're already the first and the hardest hit, along with the fishing industry and the insurance industry and anyone who works outside in the punishing heat. Government agency ABARES has already calculated that farmers have lost a ton of money from climate. ABARES says that, in the last 25 years, average broadacre farm profits are down 22 per cent. Those losses have been worst in the cropping sector, reducing average profits by 35 per cent or $71,000 for a typical cropping farm. The Nationals and One Nation's climate denial would see farmers lose even more money while coal and gas companies laugh all the way to the bank. The Liberals are having a policy review. They don't even know what they think, but you can be damn sure that they'll back coal and gas. And Labor keeps on approving new coal and gas, which undermines their important investment in renewables.

Emissions are not coming down in Australia, with 10 years of denial from a coalition government and three years of Labor approving or extending new coal and gas, including approving Woodside's dirty gas project all the way out to 2070 as their first action after their re-election. They can't even bring themselves to admit that the marine heatwave and upstream inundation that is driving the algal bloom in South Australia is climate driven. It's going to be households, nature, farmers and industry that pay the price for continued climate inaction. Soon we'll have to set our 2035 targets. The science says to keep below two degrees, to have that safe climate future, we need net zero emissions by 2035. Australia still is the world's second-biggest fossil fuel exporter. We've got to do our fair share to limit global warming to under two degrees.