CANBERRA — The floor of the Australian Senate transformed into a political battleground today as Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young launched a fierce, uncompromising broadside against the Coalition government. In a fiery address, the South Australian Senator accused the government of fast-tracking legislation that would dismantle federal environmental protections, labelling frontbenchers “cowards” who are selling out the nation’s heritage to big mining and gas corporations.
The flashpoint came during a motion to take note of an answer given by the Leader of the Government in the Senate. What followed was a highly charged, deeply personal indictment of the government’s environmental track record.
A Deregulation Push “Under the Cover of COVID”
Senator Hanson-Young did not mince words, accusing the government of actively engineering the decline of an already suffering Australian ecosystem. She argued that the government’s rush to devolve federal environmental powers to state jurisdictions is a thinly veiled gift to resource giants.
“We know climate change, land clearing, pollution are pushing our environment and our natural world to the brink,” Hanson-Young declared, her voice echoing through the chamber. “And what do we have from this government? More ways to make more money for these companies while destroying our environment, and it’s being done under the cover of COVID-19.”
She demanded to know why the Commonwealth would willingly surrender its oversight without guaranteeing ironclad environmental standards, warning that leaving states to police their own backyards historically invites ecological disaster.
Invoking the Ghosts of Real Leaders
To highlight what she described as a profound failure of modern political courage, Hanson-Young invoked a roll call of historic federal interventions that saved Australia’s most iconic landscapes.
She reminded the chamber that without federal overrule, the Great Barrier Reef would currently host oil rigs, the pristine Franklin River in Tasmania would be dammed, and commercial whaling would still be operational in Western Australia.
- The Hawke & Fraser Legacy: Hanson-Young pointedly praised former Prime Ministers Bob Hawke (Labor) and Malcolm Fraser (Liberal) as “real leaders” who understood the national significance of conservation.
- The Modern Contrast: Turning her gaze directly across the chamber, she delivered her most biting line of the day: “Not like these cowards over here on the red benches, who do nothing but hand over more and more ways for big corporations to destroy our environment in the name of profit.”
Exposing the ‘Carbon Club’
The Senator’s crosshairs then firmly locked onto Minister Mathias Cormann. Dismissing his credentials entirely, Hanson-Young referenced investigative journalist Marion Wilkinson’s recent book, The Carbon Club, to expose what she characterized as a long-standing ideological crusade against climate action.
She accused Minister Cormann of historic collusion with former Senator Cory Bernardi, alleging the pair used to “huddle together on a weekly basis” for the explicit purpose of tearing down carbon-pricing and environmental protections.
“Minister Cormann has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to looking after the environment,” she fired out. “They can’t be trusted, they don’t care.”
The Juukan Gorge Irony: A Bizarre Corporate Invitation
In a dramatic twist, Hanson-Young used the final moments of her speech to weaponise the recent global scandal surrounding Rio Tinto’s destruction of the 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelters at Juukan Gorge.
She highlighted the bitter irony of Rio Tinto’s global CEO recently entering Australia and bypassing the strict quarantine caps that have left thousands of everyday Australians stranded overseas—all so he could issue an apology to Traditional Owners for an act of legal “environmental vandalism.”
[Rio Tinto Crisis Timeline]
│
├─► Juukan Gorge caves destroyed due to weak legal loopholes.
├─► CEO bypasses strict quarantine caps to enter Australia.
└─► Hanson-Young calls on the corporation to back the Greens.
In an unprecedented move, Hanson-Young issued a direct challenge to the mining giant to break ranks with the Coalition government.
“If there’s anyone in this country right now who knows why we need stronger environmental laws, you’d think it would be the head of Rio Tinto,” Hanson-Young said. “I call on Rio Tinto to stand with the Greens and to argue that there needs to be stronger environmental protections… because they, of all people, know firsthand what happens when there aren’t proper protections in place. You know what happens? Big companies blow up ancient Aboriginal heritage.”
The government benches remained stoic under the onslaught, but the gauntlet has been emphatically thrown down. As the debate over Australia’s environmental laws intensifies, the battle lines in Canberra have never been more starkly drawn.