No new gas - starting in our homes!

Abigail spoke in Parliament about how vitally important it is for NSW to urgently get households off of gas.

Abigail said:

I take note of a number of answers that were given by the Minister for Energy, and Minister for Climate Change in answer to questions about what Victoria has done to ban gas in new homes, and the apparent contradiction between comments from Minister Sharpe and the Premier, which do not actually seem that different. It is far from reassuring for the people of New South Wales that anybody in the Labor Government will take action on climate change. We heard a whole lot of "meh" from both of them. I want to drill down into what the Premier was reported as saying. He said, "I don't need another complication." Now, I always like to look at the dictionary. TheCambridge Dictionary definition of "complication" is, "Something that makes a situation more difficult".

Finding homes for and repairing the lives of thousands of people after a flood event or a bushfire is pretty complicated. I understand that, as a Premier of this State, that would be pretty complicated. Building new infrastructure and retrofitting buildings, particularly for lower-income earners and more vulnerable people in our society, to provide them with comfortable shelter in extreme heat and cold is complicated policymaking. Trying to save thousands upon thousands of additional species from going extinct because of the climate crisis is really complicated. I understand that that will take time to grapple with. But what is not complicated is banning gas connections in new homes. We are not even talking about retrofitting. We are talking about new homes. It is literally the simplest thing that I can think of that this Government could be doing at this point, not only to reduce emissions, but also, critically, to lower energy bills.

We know that gas prices are pushing up energy bills. We know that the quicker we get homes fully electrified across this State, the easier the job will be of sorting out our energy system. It really bothers me that, yet again, the leader of this State is not prepared to set out the plan for what will happen when we decarbonise and transition away from our reliance on fossil fuels. If we leave it to the market, we will end up with the most unfair situations. The poorest people in our State will not be able to afford cheaper energy sources, and workers and communities will be left behind. It is a complicated task. The Premier must be up to it.

See Hansard for the full transcript.

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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No new gas - starting in our homes!

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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