We are alarmed by statements from the Turnbull government promising $1 billion for a new mega coal mine in north Queensland, politicising the South Australian power crises, attacking renewable energy, and proposing ‘clean coal’ as the answer to climate and energy problems.

With extreme weather like recent heatwaves, bushfires and hail storms across NSW, it’s clear that climate change is real and dangerous and its impacts will get worse. Yet our federal government, who we rely on for the nation’s safety and security, is dominated by climate deniers, coal industry lobbyists and opponents of renewable energy. The government is playing politics with our lives and those of our children and grand children.

We have a duty to bring these matters to the attention of Luke Hartsuyker, our federal MP, whenever we can.  We have tried talking with him and his colleague David Gillespie, but nothing comes of it so we have no choice but to step up our peaceful actions against both of them. We make it clear that being here today we have no issue with supporters of the new sports facility and we wish them well.  Indeed, it is the future welfare of our youth that motivates us most to act.

The serious failures of the Turnbull government, and its clear lack of leadership on climate and energy policy, can be detailed as follows:

o By the Prime Minister’s own admission, electricity prices are too high. Yet we were promised time and again that axing the carbon tax was needed to lower prices, but electricity prices continue to rise.

o The Turnbull government has no interest in lower power prices.  Last year, it rejected an emissions intensity scheme which AEMC modelling shows would save Australians $15 billion in power bills over ten years. Attacking renewable energy belies the fact that power prices have gone up more in those states with little renewable energy, like NSW and QLD, than in South Australia with its wind and solar.

o The government has no policy to reduce emissions. Claims to be meeting targets are based on an accounting trick. In reality, all it does is pay a few farmers to plant a few trees. Meanwhile Australia’s emissions from energy, transport, agriculture and industry are going up.

o The Renewable Energy Target is now the only effective policy at federal level to achieve emissions reduction, and states that have targets beyond 2020 should be supported rather than criticised.  Attacking renewable energy shows the government is walking away from the commitments it signed up to at the Paris conference in 2015.

o To add to this failure, the COALition is funding an Indian-owned company, Adani, to open a new mega-coal mine which will send 180 million tonnes of CO2 p.a. (about a third of Australia’s total annual emissions) into the atmosphere, worsening an already dangerous build-up of greenhouse gasses to trap the sun’s heat.  The government is also attacking Native Title laws in an attempt to exclude the traditional owners of the Galilee Basin. A new report by Environmental Justice Australia is called – ‘The Adani Brief: What government and financiers need to know about the Adani Group’s record overseas’.

o By advocating coal as a solution, the Turnbull government is signing a death warrant for the Great Barrier Reef.

o Despite spending $45 billion over the past decade gold-plating the poles and wires, we still do not have a national energy grid that can cope with increasing heatwaves.  Instead of blaming renewable energy the government must focus on fixing the grid as part of a rapid transition to 100% clean energy production.

o ‘Clean coal’ is a lie - a deceitful play on words that reminds us of Big Brother propaganda in the novel 1984. Using taxpayers’ money to fund any energy from coal is like using Medicare to fund ‘harmless tobacco’ or ‘safe asbestos’. And who is going to agree to a carbon bomb site, the result of storing coal emissions below ground, near where they live?

We call on the government to declare a National Climate Emergency. Mainstream climate science shows we are losing the fight against global warming, and entering an era of dangerous climate change. 

If we want to keep the global temperature rise to a maximum of 2°C, we must stop burning fossil fuels completely by 2030.  Nothing less than the future of human civilisation is at stake.