Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Energy policy

Tim READ (Brunswick) (19:14): (477) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Climate Action, and the action I seek is for the government to legislate a constitutional ban on new fossil fuel projects in Victoria. Last week the UN reported that all the current emissions pledges by various countries to reduce emissions, to reduce climate change, still have the world on track for 3 degrees of global warming by the end of the century – and 3 degrees of warming is a hellish future for our planet. We would suffer one-in-100-year coastal flooding events every single year. We would suffer catastrophic bushfire seasons like 2009 or 2020 every single year. We would suffer when essentials like housing and food become even more scarce and expensive, and we would suffer in places like Darwin, where the normal temperature would be over 35 degrees, or in New South Wales, which would see tropical cyclones and tropical diseases, and in Victoria, where drought would cripple food production. As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said:

We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open …

This is what is predicted if we do not do more, and that is why the Greens are demanding that the Victorian Labor government do more. This starts by Victorian Labor not adding new fossil fuels to the fire that is burning our planet. They must immediately halt the dozen or more fossil fuel projects currently under consideration. They must scrap the new offshore gas drilling projects planned for the Gippsland Basin, they must scrap the planned new gas import terminal in Geelong and they must scrap all the gas drilling projects planned for the Otway Basin, including near the Twelve Apostles. They must abandon the short-sighted and dirty coal-to-hydrogen project in the Latrobe Valley and tear up the secret deal with AGL that lets it keep burning brown coal until 2035. Labor must stop these projects and protect our climate by banning all future new mining, drilling and burning of fossil fuels and put it in our state constitution. Enough is enough: no new coal and gas in Victoria.