Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're about to finish another year in the Senate. I became a senator 7½ years ago. Seven years in one job, one place or one relationship is often when you ask yourself whether it's time to move on, whether what you're doing is really the most important and worthwhile thing to be doing. I've been doing that in recent months, reflecting on the great unfinished business of my time here.

In my first speech in this place, I said that my agenda for my time here was clear: I wanted to be able to look my grandchildren in the eye and tell them that it was during my time in the Senate that Australia turned the corner and legislated to begin the shift to a zero-carbon safe-climate economy. Sadly, 7½ years on, I do not see us much closer. Finally the government has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to commit to a target of net zero by 2050, but it hasn't got the short-term targets—there is no meaningful target for 2030 to support that—and it hasn't begun to shift our economy away from coal, gas and oil to renewable energy. And the Labor Party is prevaricating and resisting setting science-based targets because of the influence of the coal, gas and oil companies.

We know what the science says. If we are going to have a better-than-even chance of keeping the world below 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial levels, we need to act urgently—not just talk about it—to slash our carbon pollution. The science says that, to have a better-than-even chance of keeping below 1.5 degrees, Australia needs to reduce its carbon pollution by 74 per cent by 2030. That means slashing our pollution by three-quarters in the next nine years.

I met with leading Australian climate scientists yesterday, who briefed me on the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Shayne McGregor and Julie Arblaster, from Monash University; Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, from the University of New South Wales; and Andrew King, from the University of Melbourne. I wanted to name them, because our Australian climate scientists are absolute heroes. They are at the coalface, to use a very appropriate metaphor. They are sitting in the fire. They can see. They're scientists, saying, 'This is how the world is unfolding.' The world is now 1.1 degrees hotter than it was before we started belching carbon into the atmosphere in great amounts. At current trajectories and countries' commitments to reduce carbon pollution we are still headed for more than three degrees of heating.

What Shane, Julie, Sarah and Andrew told me yesterday was sobering: unless we take serious action to slash our carbon pollution we are facing a pretty horrific increase in extreme heat events, in extreme fires, in drought conditions. The ongoing rise in sea level is already washing away our coastlines. I don't know about you, but every time I visit any beach around the country I am horrified by the level of coastal erosion. That, my friends, is our climate crisis at work. Yesterday I was shown a diagram that showed that a very small increase in sea level, just a few centimetres, can lead to the sea retreating tens, if not hundreds, of metres. That's a lot of coastal land that's being lost.

Sadly, all that is very consistent with what I laid out in my first speech, where I said:

We are major contributors to the world being on track to being four degrees hotter in my children's lifetime. Without urgent and meaningful action, it will not be possible to grow food crops across vast swathes of the world. In Australia, the climate of current wheat growing areas like Dubbo will become like the Central Australian desert. Extreme heatwaves will occur every 10 years instead of every 100—more extreme than the heatwave southern Australia experienced in 2009, that resulted in the Black Saturday bushfires and the deaths of hundreds of people. Land that is home to hundreds of millions of people, including Australian suburbs and beaches, will be swept away by the sea. The Great Barrier Reef will be but a memory. And Antarctica… will be on its way to being irretrievably ice free. Goodbye gorgeous Adelie penguins.

What the scientists told me yesterday, however, was that there is still hope. If we take urgent action now it's not too late. We can avoid the tipping points that will lead to the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets and the total thawing of the Greenland permafrost. The world can still act to keep global heating below 1.45 degrees but that time is fast running out.

In the IPCC report the science tells us that if we want to have an 83 per cent chance of keeping global heating below 1.5 degrees we need to reach net zero carbon in six years. If we're willing to risk a 50 per cent chance of reaching 1.5 degrees hotter than now then we can leave reaching net zero for 11 years—that is 2032. So, hello! Pay attention, everyone in this place. I don't care what party you're from. I want you to look that science in the eye, to sit in the fire with our climate scientists and to commit to taking the action that's needed to reach net zero carbon in that time. Do not give me any gumf about Australia being a special case because our economy is so dependent on fossil fuels or that there's no point us acting until China does or that somehow magic new unicorn technology of carbon capture and storage is going to make everything okay. These are desperate arguments of desperate immoral peoples who, rather than looking the science in the eye, are selling out our future; who are happy to leave our kids, and us in our old age and future generations, and all other life that we share this planet with, with a damaged, compromised world, full of hurt and harm and almost certain widespread famine, war and pestilence.

All countries need to act. We have the power here in Australia so we need to be acting here. Yes, we can do our best to influence other countries, but fundamentally it is our responsibility to do what we as Australians can do. In my first speech, I set out some suggestions of what we needed to do:

… set pollution reduction targets based on science; stop subsidising fossil fuels; create more jobs by boosting clean energy production and energy conservation; start closing coal-fired power stations; say no to new coal and gas exports; and make the big polluters pay for the damage they are doing.

All of these measures are as relevant, if not much more relevant, today as they were seven years ago. ut, sadly, we haven't made much progress on any of them, other than there is now broad recognition of the importance for jobs in the Australian economy of increased clean energy production. But that's only half a tick out of six. The thing that's so urgent for Australia now, which is so much more urgent than it was seven years ago, is to have no new coal and gas. Fracking the Beetaloo basin must not go ahead. Expansion of gas production at Scarborough in the Pilbara in WA must not go ahead. The Adani coalmine must not go ahead. And why the heck are both parties in this place—Labor is supporting the government in doing this—giving hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to coal and gas companies? It absolutely beggars belief.

As we get to the end of this term of the Morrison government, I know what I want my next year in the Senate to deliver: I want this government kicked out. I want a change of government. For the sake of our future and our climate, I want the Greens in shared power with the next government so that we can push that next government further and faster to listen to the science, to have science-based targets, to make the polluters pay, to see a shift to 100 per cent renewable energy and to be out of coal, gas and oil domestically. Then we'll have all the jobs that go with that.

Let's make the most of our huge renewable energy resources: turbocharge green hydrogen production, accelerate the shift to electric vehicles and put energy, conservation and zero carbon production at the heart of our manufacturing, agriculture and building industries. In particular, we need no new coal and gas, and to end our climate-bomb fossil fuel exports. Australia then needs to play its part in creating a safe future for us all; a future we can feel positive and hopeful about and where young people can feel positive about their future. It is possible, but to achieve it we need to kick this climate-denialist government out and to have the Greens in the balance of power to help achieve it.