Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Let's just do a quick stocktake. The international price of oil is skyrocketing. Public transport remains underfunded and inaccessible for so many. Electric vehicle uptake has been deliberately slowed. Let's be honest. None of this happened by accident. Decades of policy choices have locked us into fossil fuel dependency—decades of governments backing in oil and gas and sidelining the alternatives, decades of following the US into conflicts that destabilise global energy markets. Now here we are, hooked on petrol, exposed to every international shock and sending billions of dollars offshore while households struggle to keep up. What's the plan—to double-down with a multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine project that does nothing to bring down energy prices or to make people's lives easier? We get sprayed by insults from Donald Trump, despite our obedience to his war regime.

But maybe—just maybe—this is an opportunity for every single person in this chamber to look past the lobbyists and the corporate donors and start acting in the public interest. It sounds pretty novel. There is a clear, practical step that we could take right now. The Greens have written to the Prime Minister offering to pass a tax of at least 25 per cent on gas exports, and we've secured an inquiry into it. A minimum 25 per cent gas export tax could bring in $17 billion per year to help with electrification, to make public transport free and to help people who are experiencing soaring costs of living. The question, time and time again, is not whether we can afford it, but whether this place is willing to do it.