Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While the ALP and the LNP quibble over the minuscule differences between their climate policies while both pocketing massive donations from corporations that are cooking the planet, it's time tonight to pay tribute to activists all over the country and right around the world. To the people putting their bodies and freedom on the line to stop logging and the mining, processing, transportation and burning of fossil fuels, the Greens applaud your courage and your commitment. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for what you're doing. We acknowledge the risks and the dangers that you face. We understand that you are taking direct action because of the abject failure of parliaments and supposed leaders here in Australia and around the world to ensure a safe climate, a sustainable future and a liveable planet for our children and our grandchildren.

I want to pay particular tribute to a young person called Sergio who was sentenced yesterday to 12 months imprisonment with a non-parole period of six months—six months is his minimum period in jail—for his part in a direct climate action in the Hunter Valley. He got 12 months imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of six months for halting a coal supply train for five hours. This sentence is a massive overreach and an absolute disgrace from the magistrate who imposed it.

Sergio should not be facing six or more months in jail. Instead, he should be honoured for his bravery and thanked for his public service, and that's what I do on behalf of the Greens this evening because he had the courage to do what all the fossil fuel flunkies in this place will not do and have not done—and that is to stand up and fight for a safe future and a safe climate not just for himself and an entire generation of Australians but for the tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world, who are overwhelmingly poor and people of colour, who will pay the highest price as our climate breaks down around us.

Instead of real climate action we see state government power locking in behind polluting corporations to defend their interests. We need to be clear: the interests of these corporations means extracting profit at the direct expense of our climate, of nature and of our future. Right around this country Labor and Liberal governments are accepting donations from corporations that profit from pollution. They are taking those donations and delivering on what they have been bought to do. Once they've done that they sit down with their corporate donors and draft laws to curb or even ban people's right to protest in this country—laws to protect the profits of the corporate planet cookers at the expense of the rights of ordinary Australian people to protest to safeguard their future; laws to lock in the ability of fossil fuel and logging companies to destroy nature and cook the planet; and laws to ensure the imprisonment of anyone brave enough to stand in the way of those planet-cooking and nature-destroying companies.

Then we see agents of the state, like Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force Mick Fuller, rolling out to the media and threatening climate activists with jail sentences of up to 25 years. What a disgrace. I barely recognise this country.

But I've got a warning today for those corporations and their servants in this place: the social compact is fracturing. Governments and parliaments are not delivering on their end of the social contract. They are actively facilitating the planet cooking, the destruction of nature and the mass extinction event that we are living through. Governments are going to find out very quickly they cannot arrest their way out of the climate crisis, and if they keep on trying they'll soon find out that their jails are nowhere near big enough.

Thank you to all the brave activists standing up against the vested interests and the powerful in support of a safe climate and in support of nature.