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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Assistant Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to climate change policy.

In question time, I began by asking the minister: with the announcement of the so-called safeguard mechanism—which is the most erroneously named policy that you could possibly conceive of—how on earth does the government believe that anyone will take it seriously on climate change when its safeguard mechanism is in fact a cap above which big polluters are not meant to pollute and yet the cap has been set so high that even the government acknowledges that it is not likely to have to fine anybody for breaching it? That is what happens when you set a cap on emissions that is not really a cap at all. It says that businesses on a facility-by-facility basis can emit as much as they like—in fact, up to their high point in the last five years.

I asked the minister: why bother designing a carbon policy that is simply designed to fail? Unfortunately, I did not receive a response to that question, but the response that I did receive was quite telling. The minister again harped on about apparently being proud of Australia being on track to meet a five per cent carbon pollution reduction target, which has absolutely no scientific credibility and everybody knows it. He then took the opportunity to reiterate his government's further woeful targets, for which the Prime Minister has conveniently selected a different baseline year to try to make his targets appear slightly less pathetic. When you take it back down to the baseline that the rest of the world uses and that Australia was using until two weeks ago, the target that has been announced is less than half of what the science says is necessary to avoid dangerous global warming. I am afraid I found the minister's response once again terribly unconvincing.

I asked the minister: with the Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit on this week and with the potential for some of our regional neighbours to be completely inundated, will our Prime Minister, who I understand is attending that forum later in the week, really try to insist to those nations that coal is good for humanity when they are facing a sea-level rise that will see the end of their very nations? Unfortunately, I did not jot down anything of note from the minister's response to that one. When the government have axed the funding for climate change adaptation for overseas nations, which we used to provide as a wealthy nation as part of our foreign aid budget, it is pretty clear that they have given up on caring. They are simply so wedded to the coal industry that they are blinded by the donations that they receive from that fossil fuel industry.

I then asked: given that global warming is one of the key threats to threatened species, along with things like invasive species and habitat loss—part of which is further driven by global warming—is the minister going to conveniently forget about any other conservation advices that are meant to protect threatened species like he did when approving Adani's mega-coalmine, which would be the largest coal mine in the Southern Hemisphere? The minister was perhaps a tad embarrassed by that and stood up and accused me of conflating global warming with threatened species loss. Yes, indeed there is a link between global warming and threatened species loss. That is kind of what the scientists have been saying for quite a while now, folks. It is not just me saying that. I am pleased that you have finally come to the realisation that there is in fact a link between global warming and threatened species loss. There is still a chance to accept that very basic fact and to perhaps even think about doing something about it. Today is Threatened Species Day, when we commemorate the extinction 79 years ago of the Tasmanian tiger, the thylacine, and yet are still on track for the worst biodiversity loss and the worst mammalian loss of the whole planet. We have a government that simply falls over itself to approve every single coalmine application that crosses its desk and every single coal seam gas application. It happily takes the donations from the fossil fuel sector and the approvals roll out.

I conclude by saying: when you have a climate policy—if you can even call it that—which, in its first prong, pays polluters to pollute and then, in its second prong, allows polluters to increase their pollution, you are effectively paying polluters to increase their pollution. We used to have a system where polluters had to pay to pollute. Now the taxpayer pays polluters to increase their pollution. It is really indicative of this nation's utterly impoverished record of the last two years. Happy Threatened Species Day, Abbott government. I hope that this is your extinction.

Question agreed to.