Greens leader Larissa Waters has announced that a climate trigger will be the first order of business for the Greens in the new parliament.

The Greens will introduce the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Climate Trigger) Bill as their first private senators bill. (Without support from the government, it goes nowhere).

This legislation will be the first bill debated in either chamber of the 48th parliament.

Waters:

The Labor government has a choice this term to either work with the Greens in the Senate to legislate a climate trigger, or to continue approving toxic coal and gas that is sending our planet to collapse.

Our Bill would force the climate impacts of projects to be considered by the Minister, and it would also ensure mega-polluting projects can’t get environmental approval at all.

While Australian communities are living through once-in-a-decade weather events almost every year, our environmental laws remain unchanged since the Howard government wrote them. 

These laws allowed the Albanese Labor government to sign off on Woodside’s North West Shelf gas extension to 2070, meaning more intense floods, fires, and species extinctions, plus more pollution each year than all of Australia’s coal stations combined. 

After decades of fossil fuel acquiescence from the major parties the moment for real action is now.

Dirty fossil fuel projects need to be properly assessed for their impacts and rejected, so our kids, and all the precious species we share this beautiful planet with, have a safe climate future.

The 48th parliament could achieve real progress, the Greens will keep fighting for climate and the environment, a transition to clean energy, an end to native forest logging, protection for our biodiversity, and no more coal and gas.

We just need Labor to show courage in getting off the payroll of big gas corporations and to work with the Greens to bring our environmental laws into this century with a legislated climate trigger.”