Tuesday, 3 February 2026

 Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (19:34): Each year the floods and fires and heatwaves get worse. Last month 434 homes were lost to bushfires in Victoria, and while they burnt, cars, caravans and homes were destroyed and swept out to sea in the Otways. Some families will never recover from these disasters, but Labor continues to throw fuel on the fire, approving just in the last nine months five new gas projects in Victoria when we know fossil fuels drive the climate crisis. These fossil fuel companies are raking in billions to pollute our air and water, creating the climate crisis and paying little or no tax. Our gas bills keep going up, and it is our communities that are left to clean up their mess when disaster strikes. In fact climate disasters are costing Victorians $2.7 billion every single year, and it should not be like this. Taxing fossil fuel corporations properly would fund our firefighters and our emergency services. They would fund resilient homes packages. They would fund our communities to clean up and rebuild – and yet Labor lets them off scot-free because fossil fuels also drive their election campaigns, with the old major parties raking in hundreds of thousands of donations every year from the big polluters.