Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2025

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (09:16): I thank Senator Pocock for bringing forward the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2025, and I thank all those many young Australians who have advocated this bill. I am thankful for their protest. I thank them for walking the corridors of power in this place and seeking the support of the many parliamentarians, including myself.

I wish to tell them and all those millions of young Australians out there that we care. We profoundly care. We are entirely focused on acting on climate change.

We understand that this is the issue of our generation and that we have run out of time. I came into politics to be a good ancestor, and I belong to a Labor government, a team of people, who also wish to be good ancestors. We do this in order to leave a legacy and to leave this country in a better shape than what we found it in.

I know acutely what it was like when we came in. In May 2022, when we took government, energy was in a state of complete disorder. We had gone through nearly a decade of coalition rule, and we took the reins of a portfolio that was characterised by chaos, secrecy and 22 failed energy policies, where four gigawatts went out of the grid and one gigawatt went in.

That in turn put pressure on prices as well as reliability. This was against a backdrop of 10 or 15 years of the climate wars, which the young generation now will not appreciate. If you're in your teenage years, you wouldn't really understand what that meant, but I remember what that was like.

In this parliament, there were arguments about the science of climate change, and they went on for 15 years. Those opposite—the coalition of the Liberals and the Nationals—are still arguing about the science of climate change. But we're not disputing the science of climate change.

We know it is real. We know that we are in the teeth of this climate emergency. The climate imperative is bearing down on us, but we also understand that there are an economic imperative and an environmental imperative to act on that science, and I think the mistake that has been made over many, many years in Australia and elsewhere, globally, is that we have seen this purely through a scientific lens.

If only it was just a scientific problem to be solved! That would be easy. If it's a scientific problem, you can create a vaccine to a disease.

The disease goes away. Smallpox is a good example. Measles is another one.

But this is not a purely scientific problem. This is as much a social problem as it is a political problem and a scientific problem, and that's what makes this hard. We as a federal government, as a Labor government, are not here to dispute the science.

We understand climate change. The arguments we have are really on how we best act. It's not 'why'.

We don't talk about 'why'; we get it. It's not like those opposite, who are still arguing about the 'why'. For us, the debate happens around the 'how'.

How do we get to net zero as efficiently as possible while maintaining this pesky little concept called energy security and while ensuring that we do not deindustrialise this country while we decarbonise? Why? Because people's jobs and livelihoods rely upon us getting this energy shift right.

We must transition in an orderly fashion rather than a disorderly fashion, and we actually take our lead from the Australian people. A survey of 6,800 Australians done by CSIRO and published in April 2024 showed that Australians want to have an orderly transition. They do not want blackouts, and they are completely intolerant of high bills.

The way I see it is that those are the parameters. Those have been set by the Australian people. If I had my way, like Senator Pocock, I would flick the switch, and we would go straight away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

We would stop approving or expanding fossil fuel projects, if I had my way. But that's not the reality that we have to deal with. We are shifting from a nation—a species!—who has been entirely entwined in this toxic marriage with fossil fuels for 200 years to now becoming more reliant on clean energy, and that shift is well and truly underway.

When I go to schools and I talk to young people, they are genuinely shocked when I tell them that the amount of renewable energy in our grid is now approaching nearly 50 per cent. In the last quarter of last year, it was 48.6 per cent. They can't believe it.

They mostly think that we're sitting at around 20 to 30 per cent. We're not. That's in the rear-view mirror.

The momentum has begun, and it is unstoppable. It is being driven by policies that we put in place and that we are building upon—foundational climate policies that we put in place in our first term of government. While those opposite had 22 energy policies that all failed, left the grid in a mess and left this country overexposed and vulnerable to fossil fuels, we came in, and the order of the day, when we took government in May 2022, was passing our Climate Change Act.

We have one policy, not 22. That is the foundation of everything we do. We set targets in our first term of government—43 per cent by 2030.

We've recently updated those targets. The 2035 target is now 62 to 70 per cent by 2035, and we need to do that, because, in the next decade, most of our coal-fired power stations—90 per cent or so—will shut. We're not waiting for some great white knight to come over the hill.

We are putting in place the supports needed to ensure we have energy reliability that is underpinned by the cheapest form of energy, and that is renewable energy. Australians know that. That is why they're taking up rooftop solar in droves—4.2 million households already have rooftop solar.

They are marching with their feet. They are voting with their feet. Senator McKenzie: Workers are losing their jobs.

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Irrespective of the interjections from those opposite— Senator McKenzie: I'll make them louder! The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Australians get it.

They realise that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy. That has been backed in by record uptake of home batteries. On 1 July, we announced our Cheaper Home Batteries Program.

We've already seen 100,000 households take up home batteries. When you have rooftop solar, you reduce your bills by $1,500. If you slap a home battery on that, your bills come down another $1,000.

Australians get it. Senator McKenzie: Why doesn't it work for Tomago? The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McKenzie!

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: Despite the interjections from those opposite, who left this country in a mess and dare open their mouths, Australians understand that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, and they are embracing it in droves. We have rooftop solar and we have home batteries, and what's next in that trinity? Electric vehicles.

Australians have already bought 400,000 electric vehicles. When we came to government, sales were moribund, stuck at two per cent under those opposite, flat and going nowhere fast. We brought in tax breaks, thanks to the support of the crossbench, and we have seen an increase in electric vehicle sales of 12 or 13 per cent.

That's 400,000 EVs on the road. And do you know where most of those sales are? Most of the sales—you'd be surprised—are actually in the regions and in peri-urban areas.

Why? Because Australians in those areas have rooftop solar. They're now charging their cars at negligible cost, if any, and realising that these cars are a lot cheaper to run.

The servicing costs are considerably lower than fossil fuel or ICE vehicles. This is what Australians are doing, but this is not all we are doing. As part of those foundational supports and climate policies, we also brought in a suite of measures to help industry.

One was the safeguard mechanism, which was passed thanks to the support of the crossbench. It's designed to help big industry decarbonise without deindustrialising. Every year, around 215 big emitters in this country will be forced to reduce their emissions by five per cent year on year.

That has a strong incentive built in for them to electrify their power trains—the big miners, for example, and aviation companies like Qantas. With our assistance, sustainable aviation fuels are being backed in to enable our aviation companies to decarbonise. We brought in something called the Capacity Investment Scheme.

It's getting into the weeds here, but the Capacity Investment Scheme was designed to underwrite large-scale renewable projects like grid-scale batteries, for example, and solar farms and wind farms. When we first came into government, we set the ceiling on that at 32 gigawatts. Because of the overwhelming interest in this scheme, we raised that ceiling to 40 gigawatts by 2030.

With these measures, we have seen a huge uplift in renewable energy in our grid. Under those opposite, four gigawatts left the grid and one gigawatt came in, which left the grid unstable, unreliable and too costly. What we have seen under our stewardship is that 18 gigawatts of renewable energy has entered the grid thanks to the suite of policies.

We've also approved six offshore wind zones, which are designed to help electrify large industrial areas that are important for our country, noting that offshore wind has a much shorter transmission build-out than just about anything else. We've established the Net Zero Economy Authority to enable those workers who are exposed to fossil fuel industries to have a transition into good, secure, well-paying jobs, like in the manufacturing sector, underpinned by renewable energy.

Within the National Reconstruction Fund, which is a $15 billion investment vehicle, we have over $5 billion dedicated towards clean technologies. So you can see how, with a suite of policies, we are turning the supertanker that is this nation towards a much greener, cleaner future. But it's not going to happen by sloganeering; it's going to happen with policies—the how.

This is how we get there. Along with the 2035 target that we announced was also a net zero plan and a set of six sectoral plans. These sectoral plans are pathways for areas in our economy to get to net zero.

It's a road map, effectively, and it covers energy and electricity, agriculture, the built environment, transport, industry and our resources sector. If you're interested in better understanding how we get to net zero, have a read of these plans. It's clear from reading these plans that there is an enormous economic opportunity for us to seize with this transition, with this energy shift that is already underway.

Those economic opportunities are for our future generation, for our children. We're not necessarily going to be the beneficiaries—we're too old—but it's absolutely going to be yours for the taking. It'll be secure, well-paid jobs that are immune to the boom and bust of mining—a sustained prosperity in a high-wage economy.

That is, effectively, the holy grail. Australia, although it contributes one per cent to global emissions, has the potential to lower the world's emissions by 10 per cent. That's based on advice from the Climate Change Authority, who also set the 2035 targets which are achievable and ambitious at the same time.

Unlike Senator Pocock, I actually am very optimistic about our future, as long as we stay the course. The foundations have been put in place by our government with support from the crossbench. Now we need to follow through and ensure we are not swayed by nonsense from the other side.

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