MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (16:16): Ten days ago, a glacier collapsed over the Nepal and Tibet border. Within minutes, walls of water swept away villages, bridges and hydropower tunnels. More than 1,350 people are confirmed dead, and more than 4,000 remain missing.

I extend my deepest condolences to everyone who has suffered and has been affected by this disaster. This is what happens when glaciers collapse, when mountains thaw, when the climate crisis stops being a PowerPoint slide and becomes a body count. Yet, this week, the Labor government approved its 37th coal and gas project since 2022.

The Saraji mine expansion in Queensland will dig 55 million tonnes of coal, release 120 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and keep burning until 2055. That is more pollution than Australia's entire transport sector every year. How do we explain this to a mother in Nuwakot pulling her child's body from the mud?

How do we tell the people of Nepal, who are now demanding climate compensation from the world's biggest emitters, that Australia cares about the Pacific, cares about climate justice, cares about anything other than the next export contract? You can't claim climate leadership while signing off on climate destruction. The crossbench has been prosecuting ideas gathering dust in Labor platform documents—a windfall profits tax on gas exporters, making multinationals pay their fair share and reinvigorating manufacturing—so that we are not simply digging up and shipping off our future.

None of this is revolutionary. None of it is radical. It is what the people demand.

Pragmatism cannot mean approving coal mines while the world burns.