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

I rise to speak on the Greens' Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2]. I do so with absolute joy because prior to this role I was an environmental lawyer, and I've spent most of my working life trying to improve our environmental laws. I'm very proud to be speaking to this bill today.

As folk may or may not know, our environmental laws are really old; they were written by Mr John Howard, so that probably tells you all you need to know about how much they actually protect the environment. In my view, they are set up to facilitate development, and, given the constitutional division of who's responsible for what, those laws only cover a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance. They cover things like water, threatened species, Ramsar sites and World Heritage, but, interestingly, they do not include the climate. So we have a farcical situation where a massive coalmine, for example, is seeking approval under federal environmental laws, and the climate impacts of that coalmine aren't relevant to the approval decision. The minister is not obliged to even consider the impact on the climate when approving coalmines—and, sadly, she has a track record of approving coalmines, as did the previous environment minister, as has every environment minister since these laws were introduced; I'll come to more detail on that shortly.

We have a ridiculous situation where our environmental laws are not protecting our environment. They are not doing what they say on the tin, and the climate impacts of any large development—whether it's a fossil fuel development or any other development—are simply not considered because they are not considered a matter of national environmental significance. This bill would fix that.

I might add that the government claims to be reviewing our environmental laws at the moment, but it's been a long time coming, folks. We have been waiting and waiting to see this alleged review of the EPBC Act, and we have seen no progress on that. This was an election commitment by the now Labor government to review those laws, with the intention, they say, to strengthen them, but we haven't seen the results of that review. In fact, the whole process of the review, interestingly, has been shrouded in secrecy, with closed-door consultations occurring with selected participants and selected stakeholders. Goodness knows what's going to come out of that process or if we'll see it before the election rolls around.

The government has a chance here today to strengthen our environmental laws and to fix that gaping hole in them that ignores the climate. We have the numbers to pass this bill. The government could be supporting this bill, and they could be delivering on an election promise to strengthen environmental laws. Unfortunately, the government have indicated they don't want to strengthen environmental laws in this way. They don't want the climate impacts of massive coalmines, coal seam projects or other unconventional projects to be protected and considered by our environmental laws, which frankly is devastating to the many people who voted for a change of government, thinking they would get a better environmental outcome from this particular political party. Anyway, the invitation is there for the government to support this bill.

I'm going to go through a little bit about what the bill actually does. This bill would establish a new matter of environmental significance. It would make sure that climate impacts and a particular tonnage of emissions were relevant considerations for the environment minister. It's rather elegantly structured, if I do say so myself, in that it deems a project that will have between 25,000 and 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions to be a significant impact. The plain English explanation is that it ensures that the Minister for the Environment and Water does then assess the impacts of that level of emissions on our natural environment, on nature and on people as part of her role as the environment minister. For those emissions that are under 100,000 tonnes, that project would then be sent through the environmental protection process that our EPBC Act sets up. For anything that emits over 100,000 tonnes, this bill would say that the minister actually has to refuse that. The minister cannot in good conscience and cannot legally approve a project, whether it's a coalmine, a coal seam gas project or what have you, if it's going to have more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions. The minister simply must refuse it. Folk might know that's how we treat nuclear facilities under the EPBC Act. They are prohibited as well. This takes that approach to large emitting projects of over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

I think that's a really useful and sensible approach. It says: 'Look at the impacts on the climate. They're obviously going to be so great. Just say no. Don't even go through the approval process. That is unacceptable for our climate. That is a massive threat to nature, to biodiversity, to our way of life and to our agricultural productivity. Just say no.' That is the structure of the bill.

The bill also requires the Climate Change Authority to develop a national carbon budget and to assess that budget annually. It requires the environment minister to assess projects that go through that assessment process, the 25,000 to 100,000 CO2 equivalent scope 1 emissions, against that national carbon budget. This is essentially to make sure that we're not going over our international commitments, which sadly we are. We are emitting far more than we signed up to at the Paris climate conference; many nations are. We are not on track to constrain global heating to a safe level. I will talk more about some really sobering communications from climate scientists and from the World Meteorological Organization shortly. So that's the structure of the bill.

It's 2024, and it is completely outrageous that our environmental laws don't require climate to be considered. Climate change is the biggest threat to our natural world. It is an existential threat to the health of our rivers, to the quality of our forests, to food security, to the survival of wildlife and to the continued peaceful existence of our species on this planet. We are meant to be assessing harmful impacts on the environment, and this is a massive blind spot in our current laws. We desperately need this climate trigger.

Last year alone, in 2023 alone, the environment minister approved five coalmines. The environment minister, the minister for the environment, under a Labor government approved five coalmines. Now, this is when all the world's scientists are saying, 'Stop approving new coal and gas and exit out of existing coal and gas as soon as you practicably can.' So, thanks for nothing, Minister Plibersek—five coalmines approved, and those approvals would cumulatively create almost 150 million tonnes of carbon emissions combined. They are the Isaac River coalmine, the Star coalmine, the Ensham coalmine—which is a big one—the Lake Vermont coalmine and, most recently Gregory Crinum, in my home state of Queensland; that one is approved to operate until 2073, and it would add 31 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, equal to six per cent of Australia's annual emissions.

Emissions under Labor rose by 3.6 million tonnes in 2023. I might add that a record number of threatened species have been added to our threatened species list, even though I thought this government had a 'no new extinctions' policy. And we've had more and more extreme weather events impacting Australians—homes destroyed in floods, wildlife killed in bushfires, people killed in bushfires. Yet the government has never met a coalmine it hasn't wanted to approve.

There's one exception to that, and I expect the politics have quite a lot to do with that. The only coalmine the Albanese government has rejected is Clive Palmer's Central Queensland coal project. That project would have involved the construction of two open-cut pits to extract 10 million tonnes of coal each year, and it was conveniently located just 10 kilometres from the edge of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. So, in that instance, because of the impacts on the reef, the minister was able to reject that coalmine under our existing environmental laws. But we would like to give her the ability and the clear legal pathway to reject other coalmines, other fossil fuel developments and other large developments with that big CO2 equivalent footprint that I went through earlier. So, it's great that the politics saw her refuse one coalmine, but I'm afraid that the five coalmines that have been approved under this government are utterly unacceptable and not at all what the community expects from this government.

I mentioned earlier that the minister is saying she's reviewing our environmental laws but has ruled out supporting a climate trigger, which makes absolutely no sense to me. And the government has pointed to the safeguard mechanism as its sole solution to the climate crisis. Well, it's not enough. We need to consider climate impacts but we need to consider biodiversity impacts as well, and it is right that the climate impacts of developments be considered through the structure and framework of our environmental laws. We cannot rely on the safeguard mechanism alone.

I'd like to point out that the now Prime Minister 20 years ago introduced a bill that would achieve similar outcomes to the one we're proposing today. Mr Anthony Albanese in 2005 introduced a bill to add a climate trigger to our environmental laws—the very same laws that we still have to this day, because they're very old and they're not fit for purpose. So, in 2005 Mr Albanese thought these laws should include climate, and I would like to quote him:

The glaring gap in matters of national environmental significance is climate change. This bill—

his bill—

closes that gap … It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end … We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue.

Well, if we couldn't be complacent 20 years ago we certainly can't waste a single moment now. I would urge the Prime Minister to let his folk in the Senate know that in fact he does want to support a climate trigger in our environmental laws as he said he did 20 years ago. Every time the minister approves a new coal or gas project it makes the climate worse. Every tonne of coal mined and every tree cleared puts Australia's precious environment and communities on the front line of the climate crisis. This bill would close a glaring loophole in our environmental laws, and we are urging everybody in this chamber to support it.

I want to go into some of the details of, sadly, the environmental impact of the climate crisis. We know the climate crisis is caused by the mining and burning of coal and gas, and Australia is doing an awful lot of that—way more than our planet can handle. Our coal and gas exports add more than 1.1 billion tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere every year. Add onto that the half a billion tonnes that we emit domestically, and Australia is one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis in the entire world.

The new coal and gas projects that Labor has in the pipeline would add over 1.7 billion more tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere every year. What all of those new coal and gas projects mean is that Darwin would be uninhabitable from the oppressive heat. The Northern Rivers region and Meanjin, or Brisbane, where I live, would be getting wiped by cyclones moving south, and the Murray-Darling Basin would dry up, destroying communities and our agricultural exports. Australia's coal and gas corporations opening new coal and gas projects and burning it either here or overseas is a matter of international significance and a matter of national environmental significance. So this bill does what the science demands, and what the science demands is no new coal, oil or gas infrastructure being built from now. We need to exit out of our existing infrastructure, but we certainly can't be opening up any new coal, oil or gas mines.

The EU science agency recorded that last year, for a full year, the world's temperatures exceeded 1½ degrees of additional warming. That's what we said collectively, as a planet, we didn't want to go above, and, unfortunately, we have already hit 1½ degrees of warming. Emissions have gone up since this government came to power, and this bill would stop them going up even further. The World Meteorological Organization said that 2023 was the hottest year on record, but global emissions are higher than ever, and they're on track to increase. Coal and gas profits have never been higher either, and their political stranglehold has never been tighter. The head of the WMO has confirmed that the acceleration in the rate of global heating and its impacts have caught even scientists by surprise. The rate of human caused climate change is accelerating, and it's adding to a growing chorus of leading scientists. The World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General said:

Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. It's a deafening cacophony of broken records.

We can fix this trajectory. We need to fix our broken environmental laws and ensure that the climate impacts of new fossil fuel projects are taken into account and that large new coal and gas must be refused by the so-called environment minister.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party will not be supporting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2]. We've already changed the law, ending a decade of political infighting and instability caused by the former government. A strong new climate safeguard law, which was supported by the Greens political party and independents, means that coal and gas projects must comply with Australia's commitment to net zero. Our strong new climate laws developed with the Greens party and the independents allow the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to stop coal and gas projects adding to Australia's emissions. We are approving more renewable energy than ever before. Last week, we approved one of the biggest windfarms in the country. It will power 700,000 homes in New South Wales and save nearly five million tonnes of emissions every year. That's equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars off the road. This enormous transformation can't happen overnight, but we are working overtime to get there. When negotiating the new laws, the Greens environment spokesperson, Senator Hanson Young, said:

… a hard cap on emissions, meaning real pollution must actually come down and the coal and gas corporations can't buy their way out of the cap with offsets. This puts a limit on coal and gas expansion in Australia. Pollution will now go down, not up.

The Greens political party and the independents helped designed those laws, and then they voted for them. That drew a line under more than a decade of political fights that had stopped climate action.

The climate minister is responsible for emissions and the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, is responsible for looking at possible impacts of a project on nature—for example, national parks, koala habitat and water quality. There are serious criminal penalties for breaking our strong new climate laws, including jail time for company executives. When Minister Plibersek blocked Clive Palmer's massive coal project, she became the first environment minister in Australian history to stop a coal mine. She blocked it because of things such as the impact it might have had on water quality and the Great Barrier Reef National Park. She's doing exactly the environment minister's job as she should.

Any political party or politician looking to restart a fight about climate change would be wise to think twice. Australians have seen how political fights stopped action on climate change for more than 10 years, and nobody wants to see that again. In fact, the head of the Public Service under the former government, Mr Martin Parkinson, on the TV show Nemesis said: 'I mean, we've had a decade of drift in climate policy. We've had policies proposed and then upended. We've had science acknowledged and then ignored. And we've created a situation where more and more assets and more and more Australian lives are at risk from climate change than ever needed to be. I mean, to me, this is the single most irresponsible act that I've ever seen by governments.'

Years of political fights over climate change have cost Australia, big time. A decade of the former government, of the Liberals and Nationals, meant emissions were higher for longer. It put renewable energy projects years behind. Those opposite abolished the climate laws. They brought lumps of coal into parliament. They laughed at rising sea levels in the Pacific. They announced 22 different energy and climate policies and landed exactly none of them. You had the Greens party team up with Tony Abbott to knock off the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which would have prevented more than 80 million tons of emissions by now.

When Labor was first elected, Minister Plibersek released the official five-yearly report card on the Australian environment, the state of the environment report. The former minister, now deputy opposition leader, received it in 2021, but—surprise, surprise—chose to keep it hidden, locked away, until after the federal election. And we know why: it's a catalogue of horrors, and it shows it just how much damage a decade of the Liberal and National parties' neglect did to our environment. That report found that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. For the first time, Australia has more foreign plant species than native. Habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. Plastics are choking our oceans—up to 80,000 pieces of plastics per square kilometre. Flow in most Murray-Darling rivers has reached record low levels.

Is it any wonder our environment fared so badly under the former government, when, in the last decade, on top of their climate denialism, they also ignored the Samuel review into our environment laws, sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, promised $40 million in Indigenous water but never delivered a drop, set recycling targets with no plan to deliver them, cut highly protected areas of marine parks in half and cut funding to the environment department by 40 per cent. This sums up a decade of environmental neglect.

Thankfully, we have a new government, a Labor government—one that won't hide from the truth and will do what needs to be done to improve Australia's environment. We're not wasting a moment. As I've said, we've already legislated more ambitious emissions reduction targets. We're rewriting our environmental laws to build trust, integrity and efficiency into the system, with net zero by 2050 enshrined in law. There'll be a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030. We're doubling the rate of renewable energy approvals, with 43 ticked off to power over two million homes, and a record 127 more renewable projects are in the pipeline. There'll be cheaper electric cars; higher fuel efficiency standards; huge upgrades to our energy grid, so that it can take more renewable energy; help for homes and businesses to get off gas and onto electricity; and $2 billion for green hydrogen. We're protecting the Great Barrier Reef with a $1.2 billion investment. We're delivering the $276 million promised but not delivered to the Kakadu National Park. We're investing $225 million to better protect threatened species. We've committed to protecting 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030. We've released a national threatened species action plan, towards zero extinctions. We've legislated our first—a world-first—nature repair market, to reward farmers and other landholders for their work in restoring and protecting the environment. We've committed to expanding our blue carbon projects, to rewild our oceans but also to create carbon sinks. We're working towards a plastic-free Pacific in our lifetimes. We're working on expanding our recycling and circular-economy targets and actions—including prioritising mattresses and medical waste, as part of our product stewardship priorities. We're committed to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, including the water for the environment. We have redefined the Water Grid Investment Framework, which will ensure we can secure drinking water for the towns that need it the most.

We will do all of this in partnership with First Nations Australians, because we recognise the great gift that comes with 65,000 years of successful environmental conservation. We're doubling the number of Indigenous rangers by the end of the decade. This will be a significant focus for the Labor government.

We are here for the long haul. We don't want to see ambition legislated today, only to see it extinguished tomorrow. It's Labor governments that do the big things to make this country fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable, because that's what action on climate change looks like and that's what's possible when we stop the political fights and get on with it.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I get to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2], I might just briefly respond to the Minister for Finance's claims there. She said that the government has ended the climate wars. Aren't all Australians happy that the climate wars are over! Ever since the climate wars have finished, interest rates have gone through the roof, grocery bills are skyrocketing and energy prices are through the roof. Isn't it a wonderful utopia that Australia has become since the climate wars have ended! This government has presided over the largest drop in living standards in Australia ever. There has never been a bigger drop in living standards than since we all signed up to net zero and ended the climate wars. What a wonderful environment we live in! In fact, last week new data on real wages came out, and the average wage level now is back to the level it was in 2011. We have gone backwards under this government, by 12 years, thanks to the policies of this government in terms of your living standards.

That's why people are angry right now. They don't care about climate wars, about all these ridiculous arguments we have in this place. They want a government that is focused on their lives. They want to be able to pay their bills and stay in their own homes and not have to stay awake at night worrying about how they are going to pay for groceries tomorrow. That is the environment this government has delivered, by focusing on issues like climate change, which we in this country can do nothing about, but not focusing on what we are put here to do, which is to help our country become more prosperous and stronger in the difficult geopolitical environment we live in. That should be our focus in here.

This bill, of course, would do nothing. It's another discussion we're having on issues that we can't control. It's another discussion we're having which will make zero difference. Even under the objectives of this bill, this bill will make zero difference. I listened to Senator Waters go through the description of her bill. She is very proud of the fact that her bill would put a stop to any project in this country that has scope 1 emissions, emissions of more than 100,000 tonnes. Okay, great. What is that going to do? What is it going to actually achieve for people? That's what we're here for, right? What is it going to achieve for Australians, for our country? That's the most important thing, but, even for the world, what's it going to achieve? In 2022, the last year that data is available for, the world as a whole emitted 37.15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is a record, despite all the rhetoric we hear from leaders and all the wonderful international agreements that they sign after flying to the meetings in their private jets—the constant climate change conferences we have to put up with, the hypocrisy. As we watch our paper straws dissolve in our soft drinks, they fly off in their private jets to these conferences, sign a new agreement and pat themselves on the back, saying that they've saved the world. We're up to 28 of these international conferences now. They've had 28 of these meetings. Through all of those conferences, carbon emissions around the world have absolutely skyrocketed, to a record in 2022 of 37.15 billion tonnes.

This bill would come in and say, 'Let's put a stop to all projects in Australia that emit more than 100,000 tonnes.' What does that mean? One hundred thousand tonnes, out of 37.15 billion tonnes, means that this bill would stop projects that would, terribly, increase global emissions by 0.000269 of a per cent. That's what this would achieve—a 0.000269 per cent change in global emissions. Well done, Australian Greens! How much will that change the temperature? They don't tell us. Tell us in simple terms what this bill will actually do. Will it stop bushfires? Will it stop cyclones? Will it reduce our global temperature? What is it going to achieve? It will achieve absolutely nothing. The lower limit on this bill—any project over 25,000 tonnes—would have to go through this climate trigger process. That would mean that threshold is 0.0000673 per cent—add another zero there behind the decimal point. It's absolutely ridiculous. It does nothing. What a waste of time we've got here. People listening to these must be pulling their hair out. They've got real problems in their lives and we are focusing on projects that would add three decimal places—three zeros and then some after it—of a per cent, to the world's emissions. What an absolute joke and an indictment of the state of our politics right now that we're focusing on this and not the real problems that face Australian people.

Of course, this will do nothing for the environment. It'll simply make things harder to do in this country, in our nation, because nothing in this bill says that 'Look, if other countries aren't acting on climate change, if they're not doing their bit, nothing then absolves Australians to get on with life.' Why should we stop building coal mines and gas facilities in our country when other countries just continue to do it? They're even other countries that you think might actually be taking climate change seriously—other countries that are as loud and uselessly provocative in their rhetoric about this stuff. Look at the United States—there's an administration in the government of the United States that seems to take climate change seriously. They have a special envoy, John Kerry, who has left his job—he flies to these conferences, and they make a big deal of climate change in the United States. Last year the United States achieved a record level of oil and gas production. There's all the rhetoric and all talk but what's actually happening is they've got record amounts of rigs going around the Permian Basin in Texas drilling like there's no tomorrow. Yet we're going to sit here and try to stop what we're doing in this little part of the world and save the planet, apparently. It's absolutely absurd.

The United States is now on track to double their LNG capacity in the next five years. LNG is liquefied natural gas—it's the process that needs to occur to export gas over our oceans if there are no pipeline is involved. Under our government in the last 10 years Australia became the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world. It has brought enormous wealth to our country. The exports of LNG have topped over $80 billion of wealth coming into this nation, massive amounts of tax revenues for the Commonwealth government, and huge levels of royalties for the state governments from these LNG projects. We were leading the world, but last year we lost our place as the top LNG exporter under this government to the United States. Why are we letting this happen?

We are absolute fools. This is a total and utter scam, this whole net zero stuff, and we're the only fools who are seemingly taking it seriously and not attracting investment in oil and gas or in coal—it's all going elsewhere. Meanwhile, there have been three separate European countries in the last few months that have signed 30-year gas deals with Qatar. Qatar is also massively expanding its gas production facilities. It will also overtake Australia. It's just behind Australia at the moment and it'll overtake Australia in the years to come. We will be third place in the LNG rankings. Europe is also continuing to burn large amounts of oil. It doesn't get it from Russia anymore, thanks to Ukraine—well, it doesn't get it directly from Russia. But India has—quite astoundingly—the world's largest oil refiner at the moment, despite not having any major oil deposits of its own on the subcontinent. Why is India the largest oil refiner now? Because all that Russian oil is going to India, getting refined and put through a factory, and then Europe is buying it from India. It's buying Russian oil from India. It is a total and utter scam. This climate stuff is a scam that is only impoverishing those countries like ourselves that are foolish enough to try to actually do this while the rest of the world does absolutely nothing.

There could have been an alternative universe over the last couple of years where the very high oil and gas and coal prices we have seen could have brought a new wave of investment into our country that would have created jobs, grown our economy and set us up for the future. The last time we had a massive commodity price boom, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, we attracted a huge amount of investment. We peaked at $100 billion of investment a year into the resources sector in Australia. That's a massive amount of capital expenditure. It helped keep our country going through the global financial crisis, which really didn't even touch our country thanks to that massive mining boom. This latest commodity price boom that we've been through, which did start before the Ukraine war but was supercharged by that, actually saw our terms of trade, the prices we receive for goods, at record levels. It was higher than the previous mining boom, in the early 2010s. But we did not attract the same level of investment. Mining investment—resources investment—has only been running at about $40 billion over those years. So we have missed out. We really should have been at that level, or thereabouts, of $100 billion a year. We've missed out on $60 billion a year of investment in the last few years because we've had a government that has been putting on carbon taxes—their so-called 'safeguard mechanism'—and has been actively discouraging investment in our country.

Fortunately, for now we've been living off the legacy of the last mining boom. Those LNG exports, those coal exports and those record amounts of money we've been receiving in the last few years that have propped up the nation's budget have been the result of the legacy of the investments we got back in the 2010s. But, because we're not getting the investment today, we are going to be poorer tomorrow. Those coalmines and those LNG facilities that were built 10 years ago will, over the next decade or so, start to finish. Those mines will finish. The LNG facilities will be without feedstock and those exports will shrivel up. What are we going to do then? We've been promised critical minerals. The critical minerals industry has been the saviour this government is focused on. How's that going? The nickel industry is about to go kaput, unfortunately. It's absolutely tragic. We've had this wonderful nickel industry in Western Australia for 60 years. It was built by an Australian hero, a gentleman called Sir Arvi Parbo—an Estonian migrant who achieved a superhuman feat in the 1960s of building a nickel industry in the space of 18 months. He literally built a mine, a refinery and a rail line and exported to Japan in the 1960s within 18 months. We couldn't do that today. Sir Arvi Parbo said later in life that it wouldn't have happened today. But we built that, and we had that legacy. More than 10,000 people in Western Australia owe their jobs to that wonderful nickel industry. It's going down the gurgler right now because we've signed up to net zero. The government's saying that we're going to be able to produce green nickel and that the world will somehow pay a premium for our nickel because it's clean and they love the fact that we've got a green label on it. It's not working out too well.

While we were focused on net zero goals, Indonesia—who also signed up to net zero emissions—decided to build coal-fired power stations financed by China and massively expand their nickel industry. They're undercutting us now and destroying our industry. Indonesia is stealing our nickel industry and stealing those jobs, because of our inane, futile, simple-minded net zero emissions goals. It's an absolute tragedy. Tens of thousands of Australian workers are going to be put out of a job because we're obsessed with these things while other countries just do their own thing. In 2022 Indonesia expanded their use of coal by an astounding 32 per cent, in one year. They're already a large user of coal—one of the largest users of coal in the world—and they expanded their use of coal by 32 per cent in one year. As the International Energy Agency said a couple of years ago, almost all of that increased coal use went into the production of nickel. Their nickel geology is actually worse than ours. They've got laterite geologies. That's much harder to mine and much more energy intensive. We should be beating them. There's no reason why we can't beat Indonesia on cost. Even with our high labour costs and even with our higher environmental standards, we always have beaten them until now—until we decided to go down this green-obsessive route and ignore the realities of the world. So possibly 10,000 workers are going to be put out of a job. There are already 1,000 who have lost their jobs, and the rest are not looking great.

When is the government going to focus on that? When are we as a nation going to get back to focusing on being the best we can be—getting our costs of production down, being sharp in business and making sure our country goes forward? While we remain obsessed with these futile efforts to try and stop economically productive investments in our nation, we will simply become poorer. Nothing will change for the environment. There will be no change to the global temperature. The sea levels won't start declining because of this bill. It will simply cost Australian jobs, like those in the nickel industry, which is occurring right now. I wish I had more time, but it is not looking great. The new Indonesian Prime Minister ran on an election platform of doubling down on their nickel strategy. He also said that he wants to repeat that in copper and bauxite. So our copper industry and our aluminium industry are now in the sights of the same gun unless we start to wake up to ourselves, unless we start to drop these kinds of futile efforts and focus on our own nation, our own jobs and our own wealth and prosperity. We should reject this bill because it will do nothing for the environment but will cost Australian jobs and lower Australian living standards even more.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand in support of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 and thank Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens for bringing it forward. Climate change is having a catastrophic impact on our environment. Clearly, in 2024 in Australia, that is a plain fact. Our incredible scientists have gathered so much evidence that the impact is now beyond dispute, despite what you may hear in this chamber. Back in 2021 the State of the environment report summarised the evidence on just how bad things are. In the report, Professor Graeme Samuel said climate change has:

… a profound impact on the environment … Habitats, ecosystems and biodiversity; water systems and resources … will all be affected by rising temperatures and changing climate patterns.

Professor Samuel saw the work of scientists like Professor Lesley Hughes, Professor David Lindenmayer, Professor Tim Flannery, Professor Will Steffen, Dr Joelle Gergis and many others and recognised that the writing is on the wall. If we don't address climate change, the natural world will rapidly deteriorate. It's already happening. It's happening under our watch.

The thing we seem to forget in this place is that, if nature goes down, we go down with her. We are part of nature, but you wouldn't know it from the speeches we hear here and the decisions that get made in here by the major parties. If the science isn't enough, just look at the recent string of extreme weather events that have wreaked havoc across the country. Who will ever forget the 2019-20 bushfires? Forty-six million acres, three billion animals, and human lives lost. The 2021-22 floods. More than $7.7 billion of damage. Significant impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. And we know that this is going to get worse. This is not a new normal. Unless we see bold action here, using our place on the world stage as a middle power to push for action, it is only going to get worse.

Clearly, everyone acknowledges—well, maybe not everyone, but most people—our environmental laws aren't working. One of the glaring holes in our environmental laws is not looking at the impact that fossil fuel projects will have on the climate. We have known this for a long time. As Senator Waters said, the now Prime Minister, the Hon. Anthony Albanese, sponsored the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Climate Change Trigger) Bill 2005. In introducing the bill, the Prime Minister said:

We need action and one of the actions that we need, which has been acknowledged by the government for many years, is this amendment to the EPBC Act.

That was in 2005, and here we are with the Albanese Government arguing against it, despite what we've seen over the last 20 years, despite what we're living through, and despite what we know climate change will mean for young people, who watch us roll out language that would seek to absolve us of any responsibility. As members in here we are incredibly privileged. With that privilege comes responsibility—I would argue responsibility to young people and to future generations.

This morning we've heard government senators saying that they're doing a lot of work on climate change, using other policy levers—the safeguard mechanism, various funds to promote climate policy et cetera. None of what has been said is an argument that goes to the need for climate change to be incorporated into our national environmental laws. All that stuff is well and good, and we need to do this. We need to have climate change in our national environmental laws. I'm concerned that the government is dancing around the issue and distracting from the key problem that we're dealing with here: the lack of direct consideration of climate change in the EPBC Act. In their submission to the bill, Doctors for the Environment Australia said:

To not include strict emissions allowances in an Act which is designed to protect the environment is a fundamental failure of duty of environmental care.

We've heard from the major parties that they don't support this, but my challenge to the government is: if not this mechanism, then what? Climate change must be integrated into our national environmental laws.

In 2005, now Prime Minister Albanese said:

It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end … We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue.

In 2024 we're seeing his government procrastinate. We're seeing ministers roll out this shopping list of things that they're doing but saying, 'No, we couldn't possibly put climate in our national environmental laws.' It's just so out of line with what Australians want. Australians want their elected representatives to actually deal with the problems at hand, to show some leadership, to show some guts and to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.

I fear that Senator Canavan's contribution and even that of the government forget that this is a moral issue. We are dealing with a moral issue here—the obligation to act in the face of a massive global problem. And surely for us that means doing everything we can possibly do. The contributions we've heard from the government and the coalition seem to ignore the fact that we're one of the highest per capita emitters in the world in terms of our consumption as Australians. As Senator Canavan talked about, we're one of the biggest fossil fuel exporters in the world. You cannot tell me that we don't make a difference. We should be doing everything we can and then, at every opportunity on the global stage, pushing the international community to follow us, but we haven't been doing that. We spent a decade in denial and delay, and now we've got a government that wants to get by with being able to say, 'Well, we're better than the coalition.' That's no bar to measure yourselves by. There's too much at stake here—far too much at stake here. We're currently failing Australians, and we're failing future generations. History will damn us if we do not see a change and if we don't show the leadership that's required in what is truly a crisis—the climate and biodiversity crises.

I'd also note that in some of his contributions Senator Canavan's rhetoric isn't even in line with his own party's commitments to net zero. This is the party that's meant to be looking after farmers. The government's own ABARES data shows that the average farmer is down 20 per cent on their profits since the year 2000 because of climate change. Why aren't we making decisions for them? Why are the major parties doing the bidding of the fossil fuel companies? I dispute the fact that we've got a huge amount out of exporting gas. Last time I checked, we hadn't received a single cent of petroleum resource rent tax from offshore energy—not a single cent. That is deeply embarrassing because that's our gas. Once it's gone, it's gone. Why aren't we collecting that and using it to fund the transition, to fund adaptation, which is woefully underfunded?

Last year we saw the government patting themselves on the back over a $200 million fund at the same time experts were saying we need to be spending in the order of $3 billion or $4 billion a year when it comes to adaptation. We're hearing that Labor accepts the science; they just don't seem willing to listen to the scientists or to the experts. We're hearing them talk a big game on climate and biodiversity, but we're not seeing the changes necessary; we're not seeing the courage. I know this is devastating for many Australians—particularly young people, who know what's at stake. Climate change is no longer this big thing out there; Australians know that this is about the people and places we love. All those things are on the line. Climate scientists have been warning us that we have this narrow window in which to act. What we do now will literally affect the future of humanity. What a moment to be alive, and what a moment to have some sort of ability to influence that.

We hear this rhetoric from the major parties. On the one hand: 'Here's all the things we're doing. Look how good it is. But we don't actually need to take it as seriously as climate scientists are telling us.' And then there are, I fear, really damaging talking points from someone like Senator Canavan, who is basically saying: 'Why bother? Let's make hay while the sun shines. This isn't a moral issue; this is about why Australians should have to suffer at all.' That is despite us knowing we are the developed country that stands to lose the most from climate inaction, and we potentially stand to gain the most from bold climate action. So what are we doing in this place?

One of the things that really stood out in Minister Gallagher's contribution was the fact they are spending $1.2 billion to save the Great Barrier Reef. That will not save the Great Barrier Reef from climate change; we know that climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. We've had successive governments, coalition and Labor, lobby UNESCO not to list it as 'in danger' and then not take seriously the very thing that is endangering it. You couldn't make this up! What does it say about us as a country, as a people, willing to watch the Great Barrier Reef die, potentially in our lifetimes for some of us? Surely, if we truly loved it and if we truly believed we were here for a long time, we would be doing absolutely everything we could. We would see a wartime effort here at home in Australia to transform our economy, and then a using of every avenue when it comes to trade and diplomacy to push the world along. But I fear we are not seeing that.

The other thing the government will point to is the safeguard mechanism. It sounds good: we have this mechanism, it's giving us a downward trajectory, there are fairly strict rules in terms of emissions for new entrants. But we know that, just recently, through the sea dumping bill that the major parties supported in this place, they have created a massive loophole in the safeguard mechanism at the behest of Santos, to allow them to offset their emissions by piping their emissions underneath the ocean. And now we hear that the government is considering allowing them to claim that their Barossa project is a backfill project, that it's not a new project but just an extension of an existing one—which, again, would allow them to get around the safeguard mechanism.

So I simply do not buy the argument that the government is giving. It is out of line with what I'm hearing from people here in the ACT and it's out of line of what we see in poll after poll about Australians loving this place and wanting to look after it. This is serious business. This is something we should see both major parties supporting—to take seriously our moral obligation.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As usual, here we are, with the Greens making grandiose demands that are grounded nowhere in reality. They continue to think we can simply write blank cheques on these sorts of things and, problem solved, with little to no regard for the lives and livelihoods impacted in the construction of their utopia. You don't think all of us in this place wouldn't love to throw money at other problems in society and watch them vanish? But that's not how it works. We don't live in an imaginary world of unicorns. Money doesn't grow on trees.

But, as usual, this bill isn't about helping the environment. It's about the Greens continuing their ideological vendetta against coal and gas companies in this country. They still do not understand that those baseload forms of energy are what keep prices down, with ample supply, and have helped Australia benefit economically. Not only that, but these forms of energy have helped people globally. In fact, Kerry Chikarovski, the former leader of the opposition in New South Wales, was on the ABC back in August, when we were last debating this bill, talking about the millions of people who have been lifted out of poverty as a result of cleaner Australian coal in India—regional centres receiving power for the first time, places that don't have the means to invest and build renewables. And it was as if she'd said a swear word, because everyone at the ABC had their fingers in their ears, changing the subject.

This is the real inconvenient truth. They don't want to talk about these realities, like the sovereign risk posed by interconnectors on our renewable infrastructure or the forced Uighur labour in China involved in the construction of solar panels, or that moving too aggressively to shut out coal and gas without nuclear will mean that prices will skyrocket and blackouts will increase—especially when at present we can't keep up with the 22,000 solar panels we need to be building daily to meet the government's aggressive targets. Go and build them in the regions in arable farmland, because people need to stop eating the methane-emitting cows anyway! Bugs are the new beef!

The UK is changing its tune on its own new targets. Germany has been forced to open coal again. And these are countries with clean and green nuclear. But we can't even have this discussion, because it's ideology over reality every day of the week. Passage of this bill would require the environment minister to intervene, to halt activities or limit or curtail many, many forms of industrial activity in Australia. It would disrupt projects that lead to vital economic activity, job creation and wealth generation.

As was the case with a similar bill they brought into the parliament in 2020, the Greens have failed to specify the financial or regulatory impacts of this legislation. So, just let me sum it up for you: it would be bad. Passage of the bill would give rise to even more environmental assessment and approval processes that already exist. And that's the point. The Greens would have you believe that opposition MPs and senators are walking around looking for ways to destroy the environment. But I can assure you, I'm not driving my car up onto the kerb to take out shrubs on the way to the office each morning—and in fact it's an EV, so, if I did, would there be a net offset in emissions lost and shrubs destroyed? I'm not out there clubbing koalas that are in my trees on my property. We'll leave the clearing of koalas to you whilst you push forward with this Rewiring the Nation.

Many businesses are already forced to spend months, if not years, navigating and meeting the exacting green-tape and compliance requirements associated with these processes, and this new legislation would only exacerbate these problems. There are already coal and gas projects that for years have jump through hoops to meet environmental requirements. Then, when they do, they're told that's not good enough. So is this simply a political vendetta?

In the late nineties and early 2000s, the Howard government actually considered the potential merit of a greenhouse or climate trigger as a way of improving the scale and pace of emissions reductions in Australia. However, it ultimately decided that there were already other, and better, policies, laws, strategies and programs in place to achieve these objectives. The nineties, however, was probably the last time the greenies and activists seemed reasonable. They hugged trees and told us to save the whales. Now they glue themselves to streets and throw soup at paintings made by dead guys who didn't even know what climate change was. You're sure showing them!

This is precisely the problem. You're upset at the world because it won't meet your demands—the ones that you know are best for everyone, because you seem to know better than everybody else. If only they could see that you're doing it for their own good! And if they won't listen to your requests, then we can make them listen to your demands. How very colonial of you! You're enforcing a way of life that you believe is better for the rest of us against our will because we'll thank you later, right? Perhaps you're all just victims of subconscious and systematic biases, built into the system by the patriarchy. I thought you were all so impervious to this and the rest of us sheep were the problem. Doesn't it just scream First World entitlement? Doesn't it reek of superiority complex? The rank hypocrisy is astounding.

As I've said in this place many times, if the Greens didn't have double standards, they'd have none at all. No matter. The coalition has a strong and proud record of emissions reductions in Australia—a practical one based on reality. During our time in government between 2013 and 2022, for instance, Australia's emissions were reduced to a level 20 per cent lower than they were in 2005, which is the baseline for the Paris Agreement. That was a performance superior to that of any year under the Rudd and Gillard governments and left Australia's emissions over 100 million tonnes lower than they would have been under Labor's own projections about the proposed impact of its carbon tax. At the time we left office in 2022, we were on track to meet and beat our 2030 Paris target, with projections showing a 30 to 35 per cent reduction.

Between 2005 and 2019, Australia reduced its emissions more quickly than did Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Australia has a strong record of meeting its targets, having beaten its 2020 Kyoto target by 459 million tonnes. The coalition's technology driven Long-Term Emissions Reductions Plan also set out a credible pathway to net zero by 2050 while preserving our existing industries, establishing Australia as a leader in low-emissions technologies and positioning our region to prosper. Being technology agnostic is still the way forward. Invest and any and all technologies that allow you to reduce your CO2 emissions without erasing industries. This means you meet your targets and your economy doesn't suffer. But, again, while we sit here punishing ourselves as some sort of climate penance, we look at the largest emitter, China, which is continually absolved of its emission sins—a country whose emissions make our reductions obsolete.

But I want to reiterate to the Greens that we're not trying to blow up the planet. We are committed to reducing emissions; we just have to do it in a way that brings everyone with us. You would have us destroy everything for this patch of paradise you envisage so that the privileged few could enjoy heaven on earth. You claim to fight for the immigrant, the poverty stricken and the minority, but these are the very people you would destroy in your pursuits. When there isn't enough energy to go around, when the cost of living continues to explode out of control, when inflation is rampant, who do you think suffers first? It's those most vulnerable people. If you really cared, you would put them first instead of your own interest, instead of your own ego.

The coalition believe we can have our cake and eat it too. We've proven that. There is a way to reduce emissions without destroying ourselves in the process. But, as I've said, if we don't deal with the largest emitters, given it's a global issue, as you and the UN keep pointing out, then it seems to make no sense at all that we aren't all up in arms about those emissions. Their reductions alone would have the most significant impact on the climate to date.

To finish up, I want to put a call out to all those climate activists. Instead of doing the easy stuff—chaining yourself to the steering wheel of your car on the freeway or throwing soup at art to demand climate action from a country that has been taking climate action for years—I'd like to suggest we get a GoFundMe together. Perhaps some of the Greens senators will lead the charge. We'll start a grassroots campaign to send you to China, where you can make demands of a real high emitter to help save the planet. In fact, in a spirit of generosity and cooperation, I'll chip in the first five bucks. I'm sure some of my colleagues will be willing to contribute. Any takers? Where is St Greta? Get her out of hibernation. Send her to the front lines. Do your bit for the planet, guys. But you won't, because you're all semantics and no substance, all about the virtue signal. As long as you all feel good about yourselves and empowered at the end of the day, you can all smile and pass your problems on to your kids, feeling content that you did your bit. That's what really matters in the end, isn't it—how you feel? Suffice to say, I don't think we'll be supporting this one.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill 2022 [No. 2], introduced by Senator Hanson-Young, and to associate myself with the comments of Senators Waters and David Pocock.

Labor say that they won't support this bill, and that's disappointing, because it means that the government is out of step with community sentiment. The community overwhelmingly wants us to take more action on climate, so, when the Greens and other members of the crossbench come into this place and talk about the need for more action, we are speaking for our communities. Senator Gallagher said in her contribution that the government wants to end the climate wars. Well, I think, after listening to the contributions of Senator Canavan and Senator Hughes, it is clear that the climate wars will never be over in the coalition. If we wait for that to happen to act with the urgency that is required, we will never get there.

The Greens never said that action on climate ended with the passing of the climate legislation when we first came to parliament at the start of this term. We were clear that it was just the start and that we would continue to fight to stop the opening of new coal and gas in this country. The minister read out a long list of the actions that the government is taking on the environment. Whilst those are welcome, the hard, cold truth is that it will be for naught if we continue to approve new coal and gas.

Senator Canavan said that we should just not worry about it, that it's just going to happen and we can't do anything about it. I'm sure that will bring great comfort to the people of his home state of Queensland, who have just suffered through multiple cyclones and floods and storms! Tell that to the families who were sitting on a table at 2 am, waiting for five hours as floodwaters rose around them, wondering if they were going to be able to get help. Tell that to the woman in North Queensland who was panicking when we showed up to help because her carpets were sodden and needed to be ripped out, but she was worried about whether she would be penalised and evicted by her landlord for taking the action that's required immediately after a flood. Tell that to the thousands of people in Queensland who either can't get insurance for their homes or, in the course of the next six months, are going to get an insurance renewal that they will not be able to afford.

The climate wars will never be over in the coalition, and we should stop listening to them. The government should stop listening to them in stopping further action. We don't have time to take it slow and steady. That time has passed, and a government that is fearful of what will happen in the future if they lose power is not a government that is making the decisions that are required for the urgency—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Allman-Payne, it's time to interrupt the debate, as the time for the debate has expired. You will be in continuation.