Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt MP, has commended Australia’s leading climate scientists for their courage in warning that both Liberal and Labor’s climate policies are dangerously inadequate.
 
Three of Australia’s leading specialists on climate change – Professor Will Steffen, Professor Lesley Hughes, and Dr Pep Cannadell - have today warned that Australia needs to hit net-zero carbon emissions before 2050, including significant reductions in the next ten years, if we’re to keep global warming well below 2 degrees and honour the Paris Agreement.
 

Greens Leader Adam Bandt has introduced a Bill into the House of Representatives - Liability for Climate Change Damage (Make the Polluters Pay) Bill 2020 - which will make fossil fuel companies liable for damage from the climate crisis, granting climate victims such as recent bushfire survivors or tourism businesses affected by fires or reef bleaching the right to sue thermal coal, oil and gas companies for damages. Governments would also have the right to bring actions in their own right or on behalf of affected persons.

Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt has warned that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 while opening new coal mines will not save us from the climate emergency, and called on Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison to commit to a strong 2030 target and a plan to phase out coal.
 
Today, Labor Leader Anthony Albanese committed the party to a target of net zero emissions by 2050, however he refused to indicate a 2030 target or commit to concrete steps to cut pollution and tackle the climate crisis.

Adam Bandt MP said:

Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt has slammed Anthony Albanese’s move to adopt a net zero by 2050 pollution target, saying it will blow the 2 degrees budget and mean Australia gives up on the Paris agreement.

It is expected that Anthony Albanese will tomorrow announce that Labor will adopt a target of net-zero by 2050, without any target for 2030. Based on current projections, a simple straight-line reduction from 2022-2050 would blow Australia’s ‘2 degrees’ budget (as determined by the Climate Change Authority) and would likely exceed the 2 degrees budget as early as 2034. 

Adam Bandt MP has today used his first question to the Prime Minister as Leader of the Australian Greens to highlight the government’s inaction on the climate crisis.
 
The question is the first ever asked of a sitting Prime Minister by a Greens Leader in Question Time. Mr Bandt said the Prime Minister’s response was yet more obfuscation and denial from Morrison.
 
“The Prime Minister is keen to talk about anything other than the actual cause of the climate crisis that’s led to this summer’s disastrous heatwaves, bushfires, and flooding,” Mr Bandt MP said.
 

As part of the Green New Deal to solve the climate crisis, Greens Leader Adam Bandt has called for the doubling of the number of paid firefighters across the country paid for by a levy on the coal, oil and gas industry.

Mr Bandt will make the announcement alongside a dozen active firefighters in Parliament House, who will join in calls for the government and opposition to back the plan.

Quotes attributable to Adam Bandt MP:

It’s time that the fossil fuel companies whose products are responsible for the climate crisis start footing some of the bill for cleaning it up. A $1 levy per tonne of carbon pollution from the country’s biggest polluters, proposed today by the Australia Institute, is the very least that these companies can do, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.