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

At the request of Senator McKim—I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That, in a cost of living crisis, and with climate-driven disasters rising in their frequency and severity, the government must make polluters pay to fund a transition, clean up the damage and lower the cost of insurance.

Everywhere you look in the country, there is evidence of climate ruin. It is only going to get worse. Last week Cyclone Narelle wreaked havoc across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, with multiple regions experiencing their worst flooding in decades. Ningaloo Reef was torn up by Cyclone Narelle. Coral, sea birds, fish, sea snakes, eels, turtle hatchlings and dolphins have washed up on the shores—all now dead. This follows the worst coral bleaching event in the reef's history from rising sea temperatures last summer. In Exmouth, the cyclone ripped roofs, obliterated the airport, upheaved trees, toppled boats and flooded communities.

While so many communities are beginning a long journey of recovery, home insurance premiums have risen by more than 50 per cent in the last five years. The most expensive areas in which to insure a property are the ones hit hardest by climate driven disasters. Older Australians are really feeling the repercussions as the cost of insurance wipes decades off their retirement plans. APRA recently found that one in seven Australian homes is uninsured today, with that number likely to rise to one in four homes being uninsured by 2050 due to climate change. Members and senators here have heard so many times directly from affected communities about the impacts of climate driven disasters on their lives and livelihoods, yet governments refuse to act.

Every year climate disasters grow deadlier and more frequent. Every time ordinary people suffer. The home insurance crisis deepens while insurance companies get richer and coal, oil and gas corporations continue to destroy the environment, rake in massive profits and escape all accountability. It shouldn't be communities who are bearing the brunt of the cascading and compounding cost of living, housing and insurance and the climate crisis. It should be the polluters who are forced to pay to transition to renewable energy, to clean up the damage and to lower the cost of insurance.

Thanks to successive Labor and coalition governments—bought out by fossil fuel corporations—we are now experiencing climate whiplash. Across Australia this summer, we had communities preparing for catastrophic bushfires and heatwaves of over 45 degrees and then days later watching their cars be washed away in flash floods. There was snow in Tasmania over Christmas and, less than two weeks later, Victoria was doused in flames. Over 400,000 hectares burned and 54 homes were burnt down in Ravenswood and Harcourt.

With every coal and gas approval, the Albanese government is literally pouring fuel on the fire, engulfing the country in flames. In just the last three years, severe and extreme weather events cost $15½ billion in insured losses. As with any crisis, we know that it is vulnerable communities and First Nations people who will be hit the hardest.

We know that adapting to a changing climate is going to be expensive, and those who have broken the climate—the big polluters—must foot the bill to fix it. The Albanese government should start today by imposing a 25 per cent gas export tax, putting the pain where it belongs—on the big corporations. Instead, the Albanese government sticks to the same old rules: don't interfere with the big profits of big corporations and the billionaires, don't upset the ruling class, and, above all, don't upset your big coal and gas donors.

The Albanese government talks the talk about climate change, but it has sold our oceans, environment, wildlife and future in service of coal and gas profits. They have also sold out ordinary Australians to a war we never wanted. Ordinary people get crumbs while big corporations make a killing. Families, renters and retirees should not be paying for a climate crisis that they did not cause. The ones who should pay are the ones who caused the crisis and who are profiting from it every single day. We deserve a government willing to stand up to the climate polluters, the planet wreckers and the war machine.