The Australian Greens have slammed Labor for joining the Liberals in allowing $21 million of public money to be handed to a company deeply connected to Minister Taylor and the Liberals, using public money to fund new gas projects in a time of climate crisis.

At today’s Labor Caucus meeting, the party confirmed it intends to vote with the government on a Greens disallowance motion that would have blocked $50m from being gifted to gas companies headquartered in tax havens that want to kick start a 6% rise in Australia’s pollution.  

Labor’s belated recognition that Scott Morrison’s 2030 climate targets aren’t good enough is a move in the right direction, said Greens Leader, Adam Bandt, but he called on Labor to join the Greens in setting science-based 2030 targets now, to help put pressure on Scott Morrison before the Glasgow climate summit at the end of the year.

Labor’s move comes as Scott Morrison has already announced that he is considering ‘updating’ the government's 2030 climate targets before Glasgow, suggesting government targets may be lifted but by an insufficient amount.

Australia’s biggest electricity consumer, stationed right next to a major coal field, is getting out of coal. The announcement comes as nations are rallying around the world to put an end to coal.

The Greens called on Scott Morrison to exercise real climate pressure on China and other countries by lifting our 2030 targets and stopping selling them our coal.

Quotes attributable to Greens Leader Adam Bandt:

“Tomago’s announcement is huge. The biggest user of electricity in the whole country is saying no to coal.

It's a 'code red for humanity'. That's what the United Nations has called the IPCC's latest warning on climate. The world is heating faster. We're closer than ever to catastrophic change, and, once we hit the tipping point, the climate dominoes will fall, threatening our very existence. The new IPCC report is our starkest warning yet, but the Prime Minister's lack of action on the climate emergency heralds a death sentence for our lands, our forests, our rivers, our oceans and our animals. There is literally not a second left to waste. It's not too late.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report makes it clear the government’s current 2030 climate targets amount to a death sentence for Australia.

This major report exposes the stark reality that without emergency action and an increase to  2030 targets we will head past the 1.5 degree goal in the Paris Agreement, potentially within a few years.

The report must now force action from the government to lift Australia's ambition by doubling to tripling our 2030 targets, and Labor must stop letting the government off the hook with its silence on 2030 targets.

The Greens have slammed the Government’s response to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Report, which reveals temperatures are set to hit the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold by the early 2030s, a decade earlier than anticipated.

Shooting past 1.5 degrees will mean that we will lose the Great Barrier Reef, have widespread and sustained drought, extreme weather events, and catastrophic bushfires will become the norm.

The Government’s latest attempt to turn the Australian Renewable Energy Agency into a fossil fuel bank will be met once again by the Greens who say their disallowance motion still has the constitution and the Senate on its side.

The Greens will move to disallow those parts of the regulations that seek to turn ARENA into a fossil-fuel funder.

Australia’s biggest thermal coal and LNG customer, Japan, has announced new 2030 targets for their electricity sector, slashing the amount of coal and gas they intend to use, with a 41% cut in thermal coal and 46% cut in gas over the next 10 years.

Given Australia’s high reliance on Japan, these new targets could see the Australian thermal coal industry slashed by almost 20% by 2030, putting the lie to Liberal and Labor’s claims that coal will continue to be mined and exported for decades to come. 

Leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt MP has called for the urgent return of the Greens/Labor/Independent carbon price and the lifting of 2030 climate targets, warning that exporters will be subjected to international tariffs beyond our control without it.

A primary condition of the Greens-Labor agreement after Mr Bandt got elected in 2010 and his support was required for Labor to secure government, the carbon price was successfully reducing pollution until it was repealed by Tony Abbott's Liberal Government in 2014.

With the European Union finally laying out their timetable for implementing carbon tariffs, the Greens have said that the Liberals’ repeal of the carbon price has put Australian exporters at risk, calling for the reintroduction of a carbon price and the lifting of 2030 emissions targets to protect exporters.

Under the EU’s plan, from 2026, exporters of high carbon goods like steel, aluminium and fertiliser will need to pay for their pollution in order to sell into the European Union. Other countries that use Australian inputs may also be subject to tariffs.