Senator Larissa Water Pension and Benefits Senate Speech ( Queensland — Leader of the Australian Greens ): I rise to speak on the motion of my outstanding colleague, Senator Siewert, who's been campaigning on issues of raising Newstart and looking after ordinary Australians for as long as she's been drawing breath—certainly as long as she's been in this place. Today we've asked the parliament to spend time debating the low rate of Newstart and the insufficient rate of disaster payments, which don't meet people's needs and can exacerbate the difficult circumstances that people are experiencing in the face of bushfires and the drought. We're calling on the federal government to immediately raise the rate of Newstart by at least $95 a week and to raise the disaster recovery payment to $3,000 per adult and $1,000 per child. The context for us continuing to bring these issues forward is what we've just seen wreaked upon our nation over the summer and what m...
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Senator Malcolm Roberts Matter of Public Importance Climate Change : I compliment Senator Siewert for asking the government for a full costing of its climate action policies. And we ask that the Labor Party and the Greens cost their own climate policies, which call for Australia to be net-zero carbon dioxide by 2050 and banning hydrocarbon energy generation accordingly. The real question that we need answered is what will be the change in the global temperature if these policies are fully implemented? Where is the cost-benefit analysis? The role of this parliament and this government, opposition and other parties is not to have a bidding war on who can outspend the other for votes or to virtue signal to the elites and the media. Our role in this place is to ensure good governance for our citizens economically, socially and environmentally. So what will occur from the government's 26 to 28 per cent Renewable Energy Target, spending billions subsidising renewable energy? What about...
Senator Mehreen Faruqi : Matter of Public Importance-Climate Change. (New South Wales): We are in a climate emergency, and those in the government are sitting on their hands, hands which are stained with the dirty donations from the fossil fuel lobby. The Liberals' lack of action has us fully on track for 3.4 degrees of warming, which will have catastrophic consequences. History will remember you as the cowards who did nothing in a climate emergency. History will remember you as villains who blocked international action on climate. And history will remember you as the dishonest government who knew the signs and chose not to act to save the planet. School kids have shown incredible courage by marching in the tens of thousands to demand action. It's because they want a fighting chance for a future where not every summer is marked by severe bushfires, where they can breathe without masks, where they can enjoy nature. There are no two ways about this: scientists have this week war...
Senator Hanson-Young Speech on the Australian Fires: I rise today to give a contribution on this condolence motion and of course associate myself with comments by many in this place in relation to just what a devastating summer we have had—the numbers of people who have lost homes, have lost property, have lost livelihoods; individuals who have so terribly, sadly, lost their lives as a result of these terrible fires. We know that communities have been destroyed, tested; they're suffering. Our environment has been ravaged. Almost eight million hectares have been burnt across the country in those states that have been ravaged—millions and millions of hectares, much of which was so special to this country that we had given it World Heritage protection. Over a billion animals have been killed. And we know that the figures aren't even finalised on that. Many more animals are dying today because of the lack of food and clean water because their habitats have been destroyed. We als...
Senator Malcolm Roberts Senate Speech : How dare you, Michael Mann? Last Monday, the infamous Michael Mann, the fabricator of the completely discredited hockey stick temperature graph, appeared on the ABC program Q+A and teamed up with the ABC to discredit an Australian hero, Jim Molan. How dare you, Michael Mann, pretend you are scientific when you are not? How dare you, Michael Mann, malign a marvellous leader, Jim Molan, who has the courage to challenge the status quo and state a simple fact? You come down here pretending you have evidence that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut when you have no such evidence. Then you sued Professor Tim Ball, a real scientist, and then in court, you refused to provide evidence to support your case—no evidence. Didn't the court find you in contempt? Regardless, your claim was dismissed, and you failed to provide any evidence, yet Professor Ball's team provided plenty of solid statements and evidence from...
Senator Pauline Hanson Closing the Gap Senate Speech: When I speak here today I hope that I am going to get across the voice of many Australians. I've never been a pretender, and the people of Australia are relying on me to speak openly and honestly about this issue of closing the gap. Closing the Gap is complete rubbish, and my thoughts are echoed by many Aboriginals who take the time to meet with me. As far as I'm concerned, it's a joke. The call for recognition is just a feel-good smokescreen that hides the true problems. The biggest problem facing Aboriginal Australians today is their own lack of commitment and responsibility to helping themselves. Closing the Gap is the marketing term used by politicians and bureaucrats so they can feel good about themselves and get in front of TV cameras and pretend they're doing something to lift remote First Nations people out of their self-perpetuating hell holes. Most Australians know that tens of billions of dollars are sp...
We are in a Climate Emergency, No more Coal Mines LOL Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania): I move: That the Senate agrees that, given we are in a climate emergency, no new thermal coal mines should be opened. Senator ROBERTS (Queensland): I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute. Senator ROBERTS: One Nation opposes this motion. According to the 5 November 1982 edition of the journal Science , termites alone emits 10 times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world. When will we see the socialist Greens motion condemning termites? Considering that China produces over 27 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide output and is currently planning to build hundreds of new coal-fired power stations, when can we expect to see Senator Whish-Wilson and the socialist Greens putting forward daily motions condemning the Chinese Communist Party? Not only does China produce over a quarter of the world's human carbon ou...
Hanson Young: I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture (Senator McKenzie) to a question without notice asked by Senator Hanson-Young today relating to climate change and drought. Yesterday I was in this place and I asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Cormann, about the impact of drought on farming communities and the fact that building dams were not a policy that would help the struggling farmers today or, indeed, help the river system in the months and years to come. Today I asked the Minister representing the Minister for water and drought, Senator McKenzie, whether this government will finally accept the link between climate change and drought. Yet we did not get a straight answer. What we have seen is that this government continues to have its head buried in the sand when it comes to climate change, when it comes to drought and when it comes to the emergency that we are in. The only thing this government wants to do...
Hanson Young: I was asking in relation to this government's proposal to spend more taxpayers' money building more dams in places such as New South Wales. And while I'm standing here on my feet, we know, of course, that the New South Wales state government have just announced that they are going to move ahead with watering down—excuse the pun—and slashing environmental protections and assessments to build new dams and new pipelines, all in a big rush to look as though they're doing something in relation to the crippling drought, which we're experiencing throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. Of course, the big problem here is that simply building dams doesn't make it rain. Building dams does not create more water. In fact, we are going to see this government spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money building dams that will further destroy the Murray-Darling Basin river system and further destroy the farming communities throughout the basi...
Senator Pauline Hanson Senate Speech (Coal Prohibition 24/02/20) : This proposal by Greens Senator Larissa Waters to prohibit the mining of thermal coal in Queensland's Galilee Basin will financially ruin my home state of Queensland. Some 36,000 Queensland coal mining jobs rely on this industry, and you can safely say tens of thousands of additional jobs also trade off the back of the Queensland coal industry. This bill, the Galilee Basin (Coal Prohibition) Bill 2018, not only reflects the Greens' attitude towards coal and mine workers but it's also a carbon copy of Jackie Trad's and Labor's Palaszczuk government's approach to the industry. The Labor Party in Queensland have established a 'just transition' group which is designed to make baristas out of coalminers and take their salaries of $100,000 or more to just $24.29 an hour. Without mining in Queensland, we have zero chance of paying off the $90-plus billion debt the state government—a Labor gov...