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

In respect of the ministerial response to my order for the production of documents for the disclosure of the National Climate Risk Assessment, I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is a document that has been sitting in the cupboard, buried by this government, for about nine months now. The No. 1 duty of a government is to keep its citizens safe from harm and danger, and there is no greater threat to community safety, to our way of life, to cost-of-living pressures, to the economy or to nature than the climate crisis. Coal, oil and gas companies are throwing fuel on the flames of the climate crisis. They're making record profits for themselves while they do, and they're putting the rest of us and the planet in harm's way.

Last December, nine whole months ago, the government received the National Climate Risk Assessment, which is a report that catalogues and details all the dangers that the Australian community faces from rising emissions caused by coal and gas corporations. The context of this is that they're about to set their climate targets for 2035—the climate pollution reduction targets that will have such consequence for all of us.

Those climate targets are not just figures on a page. The climate crisis is causing life or death events for people and for communities who are already experiencing worsening natural disasters, climate turbocharged disasters. Australians need to know what is in store for them under the climate future being determined by this government and their unflinching support for new coal and gas projects. But the government is keeping this report, their own analysis of the dangers that we all face, secret. They are hiding the reality of the climate crisis from the community—yet forewarned is forearmed, and people deserve to know what is in this report. They also deserve a government that does everything it can to actually solve the climate crisis, but so far we've seen incrementalism at best.

In any other job, if you were to refuse to produce a report like this, you would probably be fired. There would be serious consequences. Instead the people who are facing the consequences are those who are suffering on the front lines of the climate crisis. People who have seen the contents of this report and who have bravely spoken out and blown the whistle, have described it as 'dire', 'extremely confronting' and a number of other descriptors, which really illustrate exactly why the government is burying this report. It's a bad news story, and they're trying to cover it up.

We passed an order for the production of documents. Today the minister said, 'Soz, we're not going to give it to you.' That's not on. We'll be moving to force disclosure, and we will also be moving for an inquiry into what is in this report.

How can Labor honestly say they are representing the community, when they are hiding a climate report? Which big coal and gas company are they serving today? Is it Woodside, is it Chevron or is it BHP? At least have the guts to be up front, telling Australian people what is in store for them. Members of the government know that their communities are going to face worsening floods, more frequent cyclones and more devastating bushfires, yet they still want to keep people in the dark and in harm's way. Let's be clear about what purposes this is serving. Labor is refusing to produce this reported to cover up the fact that they're about to announce emissions reduction targets that will lock us into more than two degrees of warming and more coal and gas. And boy does that suit the coal and gas donors for the Labor Party!

If you're in a life-and-death emergency, the first thing that you are taught to do is to remove the danger. You get out of coal and gas as quickly as possible. But what does our new environment minister do 16 days into his job? He ticks off on the North West Shelf gas expansion project—a massive climate bomb. What an absolute farce. It makes a mockery of this government's so-called commitment to climate, and they are still burying this climate risk assessment report.

You don't want to show us what's in store, because what it will actually tell us is that we need to phase out coal and gas exports and we need that transition off dirty fossil fuels. That is what Australians voted for, not this secrecy and not this continued kowtowing to coal and gas companies.

The 2035 target has to face up to coal and gas exports, or we are consigned to live in the terrifying future that this very report documents—this dire and extremely confronting climate assessment report. People deserve to know exactly how the climate crisis is making our country less safe, destroying the environment and supercharging climate disasters that are already costing communities. The only reason the government would be trying to hide this report that they don't want you to see is that they're about to announce inadequate 2035 climate targets.

Global temperatures are higher than they have ever been. Global emissions are also higher than they've ever been, yet this government, just like the last, continues to approve new coal and gas projects. Setting an end date for coal and gas exports is the biggest contribution that Australia could make to the world's decarbonising, because we would be setting in place a timetable for the rest of the world to follow—that is, as the second-largest fossil fuel emission exporter in the world. We're actually in quite a powerful position here. Australia has done far too little for far too long, and we now need science based targets that keep warming below two degrees. That requires a monumental effort and it requires reaching net zero by 2035, not by 2050 and not by never, as Mr Barnaby Joyce would have had us believe in the other place earlier today.

I want to wrap up this contribution with an observation about the reason why the government says it can't tell anyone about this disastrous climate risk report, which we know contains cover-to-cover bad news and tells the truth about what we face if this government keeps kissing the hand of coal and gas companies. The government claims that they can't tell us what's in this report that they've been keeping secret for nine months, because it's somehow cabinet in confidence. Well, we've had a look at what the rules about public interest immunity are, and they are not just a carte blanche 'we wheeled it through the cabinet room, so it's okay—we can't tell you'; the document actually needs to detail cabinet deliberations. A document that merely informs cabinet and informs their deliberations is not a document that reveals cabinet deliberations, so this is a completely farcical excuse to not disclose an inconvenient report.

The Senate didn't order a draft; we didn't order an incomplete document. These aren't deliberations of the Public Service. The order for the production of documents sought the release of the final report, so we will move for the Senate to again require the production of this climate risk assessment and to reject the flimsy fig leaf that the government has tried to come up with because they don't like the climate bad news.

The rest of Australia knows exactly what is coming down the line, and, frankly, the government are just trying to use it as cover to release 2035 climate targets that will keep big business happy rather than being led by the science and being based on actually trying to keep us all and nature safe going forwards. Once again the fossil fuel companies, their donors and their promise of lucrative lobbying jobs after politics have clouded the judgement of this government, and the Australian public is sick of it. They voted for something different, and what they're getting is more of the same. They are sick of the favours for Woodside, for Chevron and for BHP, these big companies that are exporting this polluting material, not even paying their fair share of tax, not dealing with people's domestic energy bills, making the world less safe for all of us and trashing nature in the process. What an absolute abomination of a decision by this government, to keep this risk assessment report in the bottom drawer—for shame. We will move again to force the disclosure of this report.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why on earth would a government try and hide a report or not disclose a report on the risks of climate change to this nation? What possible reason could they have to sit on this report? I raise this in the context that this government has recently supported a select committee to inquire into the impacts of climate disinformation, which we know fills the vacuum out there of information that's important for us to assess the risks of climate change.

The World Economic Forum's global risk reports for the last two years in a row have labelled disinformation as the biggest threat to human society right around the planet and, coupled with the impacts of climate change, the biggest long-term threat to humanity. The United Nations, at the COP coming up in Brazil and maybe the COP that we're going to have in Australia next year, if we get it, is putting climate disinformation on the agenda as one of the most important outcomes from those climate talks because they have identified climate disinformation as being the biggest global barrier to climate action in the parliaments of the world. Did it even occur to the government that, when you're hiding from the Australian people a report written by experts in this area, you just make it so much harder to get the action that we need on climate policies?

We all know that information is power, and it has never been more true than today. Those who have agendas can control or influence the dissemination and publication of information. They can control public debates on issues like climate change. They can control policies on climate change in places like this parliament. And they can even today, thanks to the tech platforms we have, control and influence the outcomes of elections in democratic countries like Australia and the United States.

We know how much money they are putting into the deliberate propagation of lies and deception around climate change. It's not just the good old-fashioned, homegrown climate denial that we see from the likes of One Nation. The information they are putting out on climate change has been very effective in stymieing action everywhere, and we need to work out who is behind this, who is paying for this and how we deal with it in these parliaments.

I honestly, genuinely just do not understand why you wouldn't release this report. These are the experts commissioned by this government to write a report on the risks of climate change. We know we are talking about tens of trillions of dollars a year in damage just from extreme weather events caused by climate change. At the same time as this government is sitting on this report, I noted that the National Farmers' Federation and other farmers' groups have also publicly called for the release of this report. That's because they're under a relentless assault from the National Party and the right-wing culture warriors in the LNP who are also trying to stymie climate action and rip up any chance of getting to net zero in this country.

By the way—just like they always have since the day I stepped into the chamber 13 years ago—they have done nothing but try to disrupt or destroy climate action, and they have been successful, as they have been in the US and as they are doing right now. We are seeing things that I never thought were possible to see in the political universe we live in. We're seeing this mass political psychosis on climate in a place like the United States, with the US President signing executive order after executive order to remove protections for the environment and remove climate change from reports. He's talking about shooting the NASA climate satellite out of the sky. We are talking about Donald Trump, the leader of the so-called greatest nation on the planet.

At this time, when we have a government that is claiming that they are going to act on climate, why would you hide a report? The exact thing we need to be doing is talking to Australians about the risks. If we don't have that open, transparent and honest conversation, if we can't provide that information, how are we ever going to win? We know that there's billionaires, fossil fuel companies and all sorts of dark money and dodgy people promoting climate disinformation, deliberate lies and deception to muddy the debate and make sure they get the outcome that they want, which is ripping up net zero in this country and throwing us and future generations of Australians under the bus. It's all so that they can make more bloody money, hold on to political power or run their political agendas.

I ask the government: please reconsider. There are a lot of good people behind this report that I know want to see this published. They know this is an important document. And I commend Senator Waters and—I don't know if I'm allowed to say this to you, Acting Deputy President—others who have tried to bring this issue up. We need to see this report if we are going to win the fight for climate action. The worst thing we can be doing is burying the evidence from experts. If we believe in the scientists and the experts—and they are our only hope. They are our Obi-Wan Kenobi in this battle. The worst thing we can do is bury the evidence for political agendas. I urge and I beg the government to release this report so we can see what it says and have honest discussions with stakeholders.

I would like to talk to farmers next week. We're having an event at the Press Club with Farmers for Climate Action, and agricultural stakeholders will be there. I will be speaking, as will, no doubt, other MPs and senators. I want to be able to say to farmers, 'I've got the evidence that your future is in jeopardy: the droughts, the pestilence, the extreme weather events—all the things—and the disruptions to food chains, supply chains and food security.' We need to see that evidence. I ask the government to reconsider. Next time the Greens put up an order for the production for documents, let's have a look at it.

The last thing I would like to say is that, when I started in the Senate, I had a similar situation with an order for the production of documents on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I remember sitting down with the then clerk of the Senate, Rosemary Laing. I said to the Clerk, 'Clerk, what do you do in these situations when a government won't respect a decision or the will of the Senate?' She got Odgers' out and she showed me the right sections. Unfortunately, I can't remember off the top of my head what sections they were, but I do clearly remember Rosemary Laing saying to me: 'It's your job to disrupt the agenda of the Senate if the government won't provide a document after an order by the Senate. It's your job to disrupt the Senate.' I remind Senators: that is what it says in Odgers'. We might get a different interpretation from the Clerk today, but that is my very clear recollection of her advice: do what you can to get the government to produce this document.

I think it's well worth considering that we entered this parliament with the idea that we would work constructively together with the government on issues like climate change. I thank you for supporting the select committee into climate disinformation, but please realise you are making our life so much harder if you can't release basic, important information, the truth in this really critical debate.

Question agreed to.