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

[by video link] We are in a critical time for climate action, and the Liberals are busy giving handouts to their political donors, for gas giants to frack the Beetaloo basin and plunge us further into a climate emergency. Labor's capitulation on this dodgy, climate-destroying project is yet another terrible decision from the so-called opposition. The Beetaloo slush fund stinks of corruption. It will be deadly for our climate.

This gas rort has already given millions to Minister Taylor's mates. Empire Energy was handed $21 million to drill at three sites in the Beetaloo, despite still waiting on environmental approvals from the Northern Territory government. Beetaloo basin's traditional owners have condemned the Morrison government for handing out millions to gas companies to frack their land. The Kurri Kurri gas plant and the Pilliga-Narrabri coal seam gas wells in New South Wales need to be abandoned right now. The First Nations people of Coonabarabran want to know why their Gamilaraay land, their culture and heritage, is being destroyed for this dangerous and irrelevant industry. These projects are just plain reckless. The Morrison government have used the cover of this pandemic to help their donors in the coal and gas lobby to stockpile even more profits while they pollute the water and the very air that we all breathe. No matter how these climate criminals spin it, we know gas is as dirty as coal.

Unlike Labor, the Greens will not stand by and watch the Liberal-Nationals destroy country and plunge us faster into a climate emergency. I really hope, though, that Labor listen to traditional owners on whose very land we all live, and change their minds to protect it, rather than be partners in its destruction.