Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

When climate-wrecking corporations like BHP and Chevron are backing this government's EPBC reforms, that should tell you everything you .need to know about how much this government actually cares about the climate and the environment. When the government is forced to release key documents after keeping them secret and hidden for months and months about the existential climate risks we are facing, that should tell you everything you need to know about who they are really here to serve.

The Labor government has proven time and time again that it is here for big corporations, billionaires and their fossil fuel donors, who are given free licence to wreck the climate and cook our planet. Labor knows the climate cliff that we are hurtling off. They know the seriousness of the crisis we face, otherwise their own climate risk assessment report that they kept from the public would have been released a long time ago, and the Senate would not have had to force their hand to make that public. The climate risk assessment lays bare the climate devastation we face—the extreme heat, flooding, disasters and deaths. No-one will be immune from the effects of the climate crisis in the years to come, but it will be our most vulnerable communities who will be hit the hardest—First Nations people, disabled people, people in poverty and migrant communities. Of course, the global south, which has done nothing to create the climate crisis, is on the front lines of the extravagance and greed for profits of the global north.

Climate-driven disasters are becoming more frequent and more extreme, we know that, and that is adding to the housing crisis that has already been supercharged by Labor's reckless support for the profits of big banks, big developers and the rich. With climate-driven disasters making more houses unable to be occupied and uninsurable, housing insecurity will continue rise. We know that insurance is out of reach for many people. It is a major stressor for at-risk communities, and, as usual, it is families, communities, renters and retirees who are suffering because of the skyrocketing prices of insurance premiums.

In recent weeks, the earth reached a catastrophic tipping point, with warm-water coral reefs now facing long-term decline. We are on the brink of other tipping points as well, including the dieback of the Amazon, the loss of ice sheets and the collapse of major ocean currents. We have already hit 1.4 degrees of warming, and we will reach 1.5 degrees in the next 10 years, given the direction that Labor is going, because, with their pathetic targets, Labor is paving the road to destruction, hand in hand with the same coal and gas corporations who are cooking the planet and where billionaires are pocketing profit after profit—obscene profit after obscene profit. People and the planet are paying the price for the excesses, greed and profit of billionaires and corporations. Labor is doing nothing to rein that in.