Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, here we go again—another day in this parliament, another game of 'guess who this government is working for'. Whether it's gambling reform, whether it's taxing our gas exports or whether it's this issue—multinational gas and other fossil fuel companies infiltrating our schools, our early learning centres and our public institutions to brainwash our kids—the answer is that this government is not working for you and it is not working for those families and teachers who are incredulous that this has been permitted to occur under this government's watch.

When we first got wind of the fact that fossil fuel corporations—coal and gas corporations—were being allowed to brainwash children as young as six months old in early learning centres, we were stunned. Surely Labor would be as outraged as we were that this was being permitted to happen in our childcare centres and schools? Sadly, no—or, if they were shocked or disgusted, they hid it incredibly well.

Now we are back in this place and we are giving Labor another shot to show who they are here to represent. Are they here to represent the gambling lobby that donates to them? Are they here to represent the fossil fuel industry that donates to them? Or are they here to represent Australian families and children? Labor will have a very, very simple choice in front of them in a matter of minutes: to support an inquiry into the influence of multinational coal and gas corporations on Australian children, or not to. That is the proposition that we are here to talk about today. It's a pretty simple one.

It's a chance to ask some very basic questions of these fossil fuel polluters, of the education system, of the experts who know and understand the impacts of brainwashing children as young as six months old. How much money are fossil fuel corporations spending to influence children? How many programs are they running? How many schools? How many early learning centres? How many sporting clubs? How many community organisations? Perhaps most importantly, why are they running these programs? We've got a pretty good idea of why we think they are, but let's hear from them. Why are they running these programs in our schools? What is the end goal of these investments? What are the impacts on our kids?

Let's be clear; that is what we are talking about. We are talking about business investments from multinational coal and gas corporations designed to get into our early learning centres and our schools to brainwash our children and to buy social licence because they know their social licence is on the brink. They know Australians have had a gutful of being ripped off in the great Australian gas rip-off. Now they're trying to build social licence amongst children as young as six months old. Come on! How can anyone hear this and not act? How can anyone hear this and not support an inquiry into this absolute travesty?

I just cannot compute, as the mother of a three-year old, imagining my child coming home with a Santos drink bottle and being told that the very climate impacts that my child is going to have to endure are as much their responsibility to prevent as it is for these fossil fuel corporations that are brainwashing them. How do you keep a straight face? How do you keep on going in this role as family members? I just can't compute.

They do it because they understand the value of getting in early—future customers, future workers, future voters, future communities hooked on fossil fuels instead of transitioning to clean and secure energy. And these are the future generations who will have to live with the consequences of the climate crisis their industry is driving. They want to shape the story before kids are old enough to critically examine it and question it for themselves. They want to tell them: 'We're not the bad guys. Don't look too closely. Don't ask who's causing the climate crisis. Don't trust the science. Here, have a beanie. Have a cap. Have a drink bottle. We're the good guys.' Bullshit.

During the past weeks, I've heard from families and communities across this country—I withdraw.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hodgins-May, I honestly did not hear—well, I heard something, but I wasn't sure what I heard. It is correct; you should withdraw it. That's not somewhere we should go.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. It was a reaction. I withdraw. During the past weeks, I've heard from families and communities across this country whose children have been subjected to exactly this kind of influence. As I said, kids are being given gas company drink bottles and sun hats, and curriculum materials that diminish the role of fossil fuels in climate change while helping children learn how to write cover letters for jobs in the fossil fuel industry, and the same attention is not given to the renewables and regenerative energy industries that will actually build our jobs of the future. Teachers are reprimanded and even face the prospect of losing their jobs if they refuse to teach this fossil fuel propaganda. In the Northern Territory, Beetaloo Energy is sponsoring ice skating—of course! The joke writes itself because we know that many of these kids will never again see snow or ice or hit the ice rink. Thanks, Beetaloo Energy. That's very generous of you.

Let's be clear. An inquiry is crumbs. It is the bare minimum, but it matters. It matters to these families. It matters to these teachers. It matters to me. It matters to the Greens because Australian families deserve to know what is happening in their children's schools, in their sporting clubs and in their communities. Labor know that, and they want this to go away. Well, we've got news for them. This is not going away. They can vote against this inquiry. They can bury their heads in the sand. They can protect their relationships with the fossil fuel industry, but we're not letting this go. We won't let it go for the sake of our children or any child. They deserve an education based on evidence, not on propaganda. We won't let it go until fossil fuel corporations are out of our schools, early learning centres and sporting clubs and staying the heck away from our children.

I really want to say a huge thank you to Comms Declare for their report and for bringing this issue to light and surfacing it. Thank you. I know you won't let this go, and we are behind you. I want to thank the Australian Youth Climate Coalition for their work and for representing the generation that is being forced to live through the crisis they did not create. And I want to thank the teachers, the educators, developmental experts, parents and families who have stood up and said, 'This is not right.'

Labor, here's your choice. You can stand with families, children, educators and scientists, or you can stand with your coal and gas donors again—the lobbyists, the polluters and the climate change deniers. I know which side I'm on. We, the Greens, know which side we're on. I've seen Labor members squirming in their seats when they hear this stuff. You've got an opportunity to draw a line in the sand. This is about our kids, our children, and Australian families. Stand with the families and vote for this inquiry. Vote how the people who elected you expect you to vote.

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

As a former classroom teacher for over two decades, I know how overworked and time-poor our classroom teachers are and that public schools are still not fully funded, leaving teachers to make up the shortfall with their own time, energy and resources. Unfortunately, it's not surprising to me that, when fossil fuel corporations with their own self-serving agendas hand out lesson plans, educational programs or money for sponsorships, public schools take them up on their offer.

Right across the country, our kids are being taught lessons that are written by fossil fuel companies and corporations. In their recent report, as my colleague Senator Hodgins-May said, Comms Declare identified over 260 fossil fuel linked programs in our schools funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, including the fossil fuel companies' take on climate change. It is likely that this is only the tip of the iceberg. It's honestly downright dystopian that we've outsourced our kids' education on science and technology to corporations that directly benefit from distorting the facts on this existential crisis of our time.

Our schools are being used as platforms for greenwashing propaganda and corporate promotion. Climate education is being branded with the Woodside logo, and the content of that education is minimising the role of fossil fuels in the crisis. These corporations are not paying tens of millions of dollars to get these programs into our schools out of a sense of charity. They are buying the ability to propagandise children with greenwashing and self-promotion smuggled into their classrooms. Living in regional Queensland, I recognise this pattern of behaviour really well. Fossil fuel companies leverage trusted institutions and they use their billions to buy social licence for their pollution and climate degradation. They buy sponsorships at sporting clubs and local schools and they try to parlay that into a licence to extract our natural resources and to keep the enormous profits for themselves, ruining our planet and our kids' futures in the process.

These shocking revelations about the fossil fuel industry's influence in education are just the most audacious example of a far-reaching strategy by these corporations to capture our civil institutions, and Labor should be concerned about that. But what can we expect when the government is still pushing off the adequate resourcing of our public schools into the next decade? When teachers are overworked and time poor, how can we be surprised when they take on these ready-made lesson plans? We've also heard from Comms Declare and from teachers that, in some instances, they're not being given a choice as to whether they use those materials and they're having them foisted on them by the people above them.

Schools and teachers should not have to look to fossil fuel companies to fill the gaps left in the resourcing of our public schools by this government. I support the call of my colleague Senator Hodgins-May and the Greens for an inquiry into this fossil fuel propaganda in our schools. That is a call that this Labor government should support because we need to understand how deep this influence goes. We also need to urgently fully resource our public schools to alleviate the workload of teachers and to allow them to deliver the science based, factual, unbiased education that our kids deserve.

I want to reiterate the points made by Senator Hodgins-May. These are big corporations making bank off an industry that is destroying our planet and our kids' futures. Their social licence is ebbing away. In order to stop that, to buy themselves time to keep digging up coal, to keep fracking gas and to keep destroying our climate, they are using our kids, to get them on board before they have the ability to critically evaluate what is being put in front of them.

We have heard that parents are horrified by this. I have two grandkids, a four-year old and a six-year-old. The idea that in their childcare centre or their classroom they are being fed fossil fuel corporation propaganda under the guise of science lessons is abhorrent to me, and it should be abhorrent to every single person sitting on the government benches. We would not allow tobacco companies into our classrooms. They're not writing lesson plans on health.

This inquiry needs to happen. Labor needs to stand up to fossil fuel corporations and vested interests. They need to be prepared to let a light shine on what is going on in our childcare centres and schools and what teachers are being told they have to teach in their classrooms in relation to this stuff and let the community know and understand what is happening and how far it goes. For that reason, I reiterate Senator Hodgins-May's call. Labor should support this inquiry.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Hodgins-May be agreed to.