New laws that would require climate impacts and carbon emissions to be assessed before large-scale projects are given environmental approval have been introduced into the Senate today.

The ‘Climate Trigger’ Bill would ensure mining, drilling and large-scale land clearing projects would need to be assessed on whether they make climate change worse.

Greens Environment Spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young who introduced the Bill said a federal climate trigger was long overdue.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

   (i) Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signed off on a $2 billion deal with the New South Wales Government that would fast track the Narrabri Gas Project (NGP), which will extract gas from coal seams lying deep beneath the mighty Pilliga Forest,

   (ii) the NGP is fiercely opposed by local communities, farmers, and ecologists because it threatens the Pilliga Forest, the Great Artesian Basin, farmers' livelihoods, and food and water security, and

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Faruqi today relating to impact of the climate crisis on students.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Cormann. Your government has relentlessly attacked students striking for climate action. The Prime Minister said kids should go to school. The Deputy Prime Minister denounced anything that would disrupt schools. Even you, Minister Cormann, said that during school time kids should be in school. But because your government's inaction on the climate crisis has made natural disasters more frequent and intense, the bushfires disrupted the education of tens of thousands of students this summer.

The bushfire crisis has drawn unthinkable devastation onto our communities, our environment, our animals and our country—a crisis that we will, unfortunately, remember for years to come. Lives and livelihoods have been lost, along with homes, businesses and properties. It has been a tragic time, and it is hard to imagine the stress that small businesses in affected communities have also come under.

Adam Bandt MP has today used his first question to the Prime Minister as Leader of the Australian Greens to highlight the government’s inaction on the climate crisis.
 
The question is the first ever asked of a sitting Prime Minister by a Greens Leader in Question Time. Mr Bandt said the Prime Minister’s response was yet more obfuscation and denial from Morrison.
 
“The Prime Minister is keen to talk about anything other than the actual cause of the climate crisis that’s led to this summer’s disastrous heatwaves, bushfires, and flooding,” Mr Bandt MP said.
 

Crisis can bring about the best in people, and indeed it has brought out the best in our communities this summer. But sadly it has also brought out the worst in the Prime Minister of Australia. What we needed during this bushfire and climate disaster was courageous, truthful and wise leadership. What we got from the Prime Minister and this government was the exact opposite. They have been cowardly, dishonest and incompetent. Full of science deniers, they have behaved like a bunch of climate criminals, with 'Scotty from marketing' at their head.

As part of the Green New Deal to solve the climate crisis, Greens Leader Adam Bandt has called for the doubling of the number of paid firefighters across the country paid for by a levy on the coal, oil and gas industry.

Mr Bandt will make the announcement alongside a dozen active firefighters in Parliament House, who will join in calls for the government and opposition to back the plan.

Quotes attributable to Adam Bandt MP: