The Chaser Report - We Fixed Climate Change | David Shoebridge

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

As part of our Fixing Everything Week, Charles sits down with Senator David Shoebridge to discuss the Green's climate policies and whether they would prefer the climate collapse faster or slower, and why ecocide should be introduced as a criminal offence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report for Tuesday, the 27th of July. Almost, the 26th. Oh, 26. Okay, right of yeah. Almost. I'm Charles Firth, and Dom is back. I'm back, yes, after a couple of weeks doing other things, shall we say, which we're truly dreadful.

Anyway, be that as a mate. Now, you've had a conversation without me with a new senator. That's right. David Shoebridge. He's the new green senator for New South Wales. No, Parliament starts today, doesn't it? It's Tuesday. Which you know because of all the notifications on your phone saying that, oh, Parliament started. And so he's going to be sitting down on his nice leather chair, sitting in Parliament for the first time ever, in Federal Parliament. He, of course, comes originally from State Parliament. But it's interesting because, Dom, you wouldn't know this, unless you listened to the podcast last week.

Which I did absolutely not do. But we came up with this idea. late last week, that what we wanted to do this week was solve all the world's problems so that we don't have to sort of worry about them anymore. So the interview that I did with David Chubridge just earlier is all about trying to solve the environment, climate change, all that sort of stuff. So I'm pretty sure we sort of come to a good thing on that. And then I was thinking tomorrow, let's solve the problems in America.

Oh, yeah, we'll get Dave Smith back. Yeah, that's good. And then later in the week, I don't know, what else, a pandemic, we should solve that. Yep. And then by, so the idea is by the end of the week, we just have solved all the problems. And next week, we can just go back to sort of talking about, I don't know. Go back to the pub. No, we won't do.

So hang on. Your solution is to talk to a green senator to come up with an excellent blueprint for how the world should be. Yeah. How does it, how do they implement it? Oh, they don't. They vote against this. You just have the blueprint. Okay.

Yeah, if anything, you know, is not exactly to their perfect standards, they just vote against it. You know the notion of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? Yeah. I think that's the Greens Party motto. Well, actually, let's find out from David Chubridge. Straight after this. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. David Chubridge, thank you for coming back on the show.

Now, you're just saying it's day two of Senate. What does that mean? Is the Senate sitting? This is day two of Senate school. So you have this sort of, you know, intensive Senate for dummies kind of thing that we're going through. So the actual Senate itself kicks off on Tuesday. And so is it, do they give you lessons on, because you're a cross-bencher, right? Like, do they give you lessons on sort of doing theatrical performative stunts in parliament,

like dressing up in a burq or something? You get a choice of costumes, you know, sauce bottle or whatever you want to do, you know, large recycling. There's a choice of costumes. And I noticed you're wearing one of those little red lapel badges. They ask you to do this in the first week so that the staff know who you are at least. Because only senators are allowed those badges, aren't that? And it means that when you go through security, no one bugs you because it's like, oh, he's definitely a senator. can I get that off you once you've used it for a week?

Because that would be really useful. You can lose them and then you pay for the placement. I had one at a state level. I lost it in the first week and I never got another one. Yeah, that was very handy. Thanks for that. Yeah, so I could lose it at any point, Charles. I just let you know it could be lost.

So what is it like? You've come, you're a green senator. You've come from New South Wales Parliament directly into federal parliament, what's the major difference? Are there more brown paper bags floating around in state politics, especially in New South Wales? Or are there a good quantity? Like more paper bags here? What's it like?

Well, I mean, look, one of the depressing things about being a green is I've never been offered money. I was a counsellor. I was never offered money. We could decide development matters. I was never offered money. I was a state MP. I was never offered money as a Greens. as a Greens. And now I'm in the Federal Senate, like, you know,

day two of Senate school, still not been offered any inducements. I think it's part of the problem with being a green. They think it's not worth, you know, either it's not worth the investment or we're not going to take it. I'm not sure what it is. But there is, I mean, the big difference I notice is in, in Sydney, right, there's a little parliament attached to a big city. And in Canberra, there's a bloody big parliament, which kind of dominates a small city. And it is, I mean, it's kind of like a dangerous,

big bubble that you get sucked into. Yeah, right. So already you're becoming distant and out of touch and thinking, oh, well, the climate's not bad here, so don't really need to do anything about it. I've been here 48 hours. It's all roughly a constant temperature. You know, you can feel it. I tell you, you can feel it.

You know, you get picked up in a car from the airport and they take you to Parliament and they drop you off at the entrance and then you, everyone, and calls you a senator and you can feel it you can and it's you know you knew for a fact you weren't special as a state MP you just need to hold on to that down here mind you the green senator you're not I mean you know you know I mean pretty special no yeah it's very special yeah um having to remove the parliamentary pension maybe you don't have quite the same feeling of immunity and that's a good thing how many how many years do you have to sit there David to get the parliamentary pension.

No, there's no pension. There's no pension. When you finish, you finish. I think there's a six-month exit payment you get, like a kind of redundancy payment. That didn't apply at a state level, so I got nothing at state level, which I'm not complaining about because you get paid.

No, because you get good super as well. 15% you get 15% super. I think that's the perk in terms of, you know, retirement things. But no, there's no pension. available. You've just got to keep working. And just walking around Parliament House, have you found that the desks there are particularly sexually alluring? Like, do you suddenly understand, oh, right, that's what was going on in last Parliament? Yeah, I can't, I can't

work it out. It's not obviously apparent when you first walk in that there's anything special about the desks or the furniture. And I knew you would, I knew you'd ask this. So I've been looking at it with a very clear eye. They just look like regular furniture to me. I think the issue is with the people. Have you checked out the prayer room? Yeah? I haven't. And I've got to tell you, there's something seriously, I was talking with a couple of the other incoming senators about this, and there's something really cooked about an institution where they make the meditation and prayer room, like a deeply problematic place. I mean, there is something wrong. Somewhere, which actually requires, you know, concerted steam cleaning on a regular basis. Yeah. And, you know,

that should not be a place where you kind of laugh about how toxic it is, the meditation and prayer road is just like a place you don't want to go. I mean, that's a problem. Anyway, let's get on to more substantial things. And what we're doing this week on the podcast, David, is solving all of the world's problems, right? We thought we'd divide a whole week to it because, you know, people just haven't set aside

the sort of time that's required to do this. But if we thought if we get a whole week, we can solve all the world's problems, then we can sort of get back more to normally. Don't you get sort of frustrated with having to talk about the climate and pandemic and everything like that. It'd just be better if we just got it. So first questions first is this whole issue about 43%.

Now, what is happening with that? Because that was really big last week. It seems to sort of have faded. Like, are you guys going to agree to that planet destroying low target? Or are you going to vote against it, in which case there will be no target at all? So which one? Are you going to destroy the planet slowly or slightly faster?

Yeah, well, right now we're in negotiations with labour about it. What we do know is if it's a ceiling, if 43% is a ceiling, and that's one view of the draft bill, well, then that's just like almost, you know, that is a really deeply problematic thing. It can't be a ceiling because we know the science is, 43% reduction by 2030 on greenhouse gas emissions, is going to cook the planet.

But it's not a ceiling. It's a flaw. They've already said that, haven't they? Well, I mean, that's highly contested on the drafting of the bill because on one view,

they have to come back to Parliament to raise it above 43% the way the bill is drafted. And that is something that we, I mean, we had a meeting earlier this week. All the 16 Greens and MPs and senators came together.

We sort of went through all these issues. And we said to, well, we said Adam, go in and sort it. So he's going to fix it up this weekend, so it's all under control. And we'll come back on Monday, and Adam will have fixed it all. Oh, okay. Well, then, okay, that's fine.

But don't you think, no, I'll just pose this to you, though, that, you know, if Labor sticks their heels in and says, no, no, no, it's got to be 43%. That's what we went to the election with. Don't you think that they have a, like, if their mandate is to destroy the planet with a 43% goal, then surely they should be allowed to enact that. mandate. Well, whatever this mandate idea is, but they got about 33% of the vote and they seem to have a majority downstairs for the moment, but they do not have a majority in the Senate. And we have the balanced power in the Senate. We're going to work on that on what we went to the Parliament,

what we went to the election with, we went to the election with a target that matches the science of 75% reduction by 2030 and keeping coal and gas in the ground. And I suppose some of this discussion about 43 or 75 or whatever the key issue for us with this bill is if it passes in in a hopefully improved form will it will it work to keep coal and gas in the ground or more coal and gas in the ground than otherwise without this bill and that's kind of the test that we're having it's you know 43 percent 55 percent 70 percent 75 percent it's really how it works in the next few years between 20 and 30 about keeping coal and gas in the ground because that's that's actually the that's actually what should be the target now i have to pick you up there you just said uh you know

they've got a majority in the lower house for the moment are you planning to assassinate one of the labour MPs so that labor suddenly is in minority is that is that what's going on that that isn't that isn't the current plan it's not on the work agenda it's not on the future plan but um they have a very slim majority. And, you know, I booked into the parliamentary gym to keep myself fit over the next three to six years. And I would recommend that when he gets his entire team to do the same. So next thing is the environment report. That came out last week.

And that's the one that the previous government, for some reason, sat on in the lead up to the last election. It basically says that the entire environment in Australia is on. a path to distraction. My question is, what is wrong with driving koalas to extinction? Last week, I took a little bit of time off with the family. You know, still work, and you can't get away from that. We went up to Townsville and then took the ferry out to Magnetic Island. And I've still got a free trip for the ferry to Magnetic Island,

and I'm happy to give it to you, Charles. Because we went for a walk and we saw, on each day, we were there twice, on each day we saw two koalas. And I've got to tell you, the amount of time we spent just staring at koalas and feeling happy about the planet and happy about the world for a little while was pretty special. So I'm going to shout you a ferry to magnetic island and back to go and look at the koalas and you'll never ask that question again, Charles.

Yeah, see, because I don't like koalas. Like I think if I'd been standing there, I would have just going on. No, there was one particularly active koala, little fluffy ears, reaching up and grabbing gum leaves and looking exactly like some sort of version of real-life Flinky Bill, you would not have jobs. I'll pay for the ferry, I tell you.

Look, I have handled, I've handled, I've illegally handled koalas before. I once did a comedy sketch where, because in New South Wales you're not allowed to handle koalas, but I was doing this sketch. I think about killing koalas, actually. And you had to wear these inch-thick rubber gloves.

They're vicious, vicious, vicious, creatures not only vicious but incredibly dumb right their brain is tiny because eucalyptus leaves just are not a good nutritious thing to eat right so they're they're dumb and vicious i don't know i just think they are chilled out they are chilled out they are seriously are the grains in the pocket of big koal is that what's going on like why the focus i've said it before we would give koalas the vote if we possibly could and then we would fight for They're not only their survival, but their expansion throughout the whole of the conflict. It was fascinating to see the way Labor played that when they announced it.

They made it out like the big crime from the coalition was delaying the release of this report. That was the big crime they wanted to talk about how evil the coalition were for delaying the release of the report. And yes, that was evil and wrong and bad from the coalition. But that wasn't the evil in the report. Oh, what was the evil? Ecosystem collapse. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's producing ecosystems.

system clouds. I actually thought that was worse than the delay in releasing the report. Like I read it and like they said, oh, all the wallabies are also going to die out. Like there's eight wallaby species that are pretty much gone. And you're going, well, you know, because I, you know, just last week did a road trip up the Hume Highway. And you're going, wallabies present an enormous amount of damage to bumper bars each year. Like the amount of roadkill that they, you know, inflict on us. I've read what the national say about this. Yeah, if you get rid of wallabies, like get rid of those eight species,

there'll be less bumper bar damage. There's probably saves tens of millions of dollars a year in crash repairs. There's another magnetic island story. We got off the ferry the second time. And we were hanging around waiting for a bus. There's only kind of one bus. And this nice older lady says to my wife, Patricia, says, oh you should go down and see the wallabies bouncing around on the breakwater the breakwater

over there and Patricia comes across and saw us and the girls and said we should go down and see the wallabies on the breakwater and we said they're having you on patricia this is just a thing they're going to do with tourists there won't be wallopies bouncing around on the rock breakwater that's just silly and um the doors are nice but we're chuckling she goes no i think there are and we said okay so we kind of just to um you know to be nice we walk down expecting to be sort of you know made a full of and the entire breakwater at um just at the fairy thing is like covered in little rock wallabies it was it was extraordinary i mean they were just bouncing around everywhere they were about you know no more than a meter high it was it was bizarre wow okay

yeah it was amazing actually okay we'll just have to agree to disagree on whether wallabies are good or not the chaser report less news less often. Don't you think it's astounding, though, how bad Zuzan Lee was as an environment minister? Are you allowed to, are we allowed to elicit green? I tell you it was outrageous. Like, if the environment minister doesn't release the report on the environment

that says the environment is going to hell in a handbasket, then what the hell is the environment minister for? You may as well just be the fossil fuels minister who also has control of the environment. And if you look at her decisions and you look at the coalition, they didn't really have an environment minister. They had just another mining minister. Only one was in charge of the environment. Yeah, it was against the environment. Don't you think that someone like her should be in jail?

Like, I look at, you know, like the Great Barrier Reef. Like these are, these are things, like just getting serious for a second. Looking at the wallabies and the koalas and things like that, you're just going, the level of neglect is criminal. Well, there's a growing global movement to create this crime, an international crime of ecocide. And of course we should bloody have a crime of ecosite. Yes. What I hope we can do in this parliament is build a case to say, well, look, even if we don't have the crime of ecocide officially on the books from today, we're going to say,

we're going to make it retrospective to the 1st of July 2022. And anybody who engages in ecocide after this, when we get the statute on, you're going to jail for a very long period of time. That's what I think we should do. I love it. And you know why I love it? Because I reckon this gives the. Greens the ability to become the party of law and order.

We are the only conservative party, and I wouldn't say this normally in public, the only conservative party in the bloody parliament, because we actually don't want to see our ecosystems collapse. We actually don't want to see the planet cook itself. And all these people who paint themselves as, you know, wanting to keep traditional values and conservatives, bugger that. Like, they've got this kind of reckless abandonment destruction model.

and I can't work out how people with enormous amounts of wealth and privilege at the moment, which a lot of their supporters have, are willing to be so reckless with their future. I mean, if you just want to retain your own wealth and privilege, fucking the planet over is a really bad way of doing that. What has interested me is that there are key decision makers, and you look at the history of, especially the climate crisis, there have been these key moments where actual people, like identify, people have made decisions to destroy the planet, you know, to cover up a climate report,

dating back to the 1970s, right? And it's not just the forces of capitalism, it's actual specific people who you could actually jail, right? And I just wonder whether, yeah, if you have a sort of ecocide crime thing where there's just a possibility that you might get caught and go to jail, it may just change the calculations of those people who are, let's face it, all about calculating. Yeah, I'm not actually joking about Ecosite. It's actually what we should do.

And we should do and say, even if it's not the law, now, when it becomes the law, this is the date. So if you're a minister, if you're sitting in a corporate board, if you're making these policy decisions, just have a think about it. You know, just have a think about it. Put this, as you say, as part of your risk matrix. Yes, yes, exactly. So the last thing, what is the worst thing that's happening at the moment in Australia?

What's the one thing that Labor should be doing at the moment that they're not doing yet? It's tempting to say they haven't yet abolished Centrelink and they're continuing to police the poor in a really crappy kind of way. But I think, you know, on the climate point of view, the fact that they haven't pulled the public funding to open the Bealoo Basin and to frack the Betelieu Basin in the face of opposition from traditional owners, in the face of all we know about the climate, the fact that there's still tens of millions of dollars actively going in to destroy that part of the planet and through doing that, destroy connection that traditional owners have

and cook the planet, the fact that that's still happening today, we've got a new parliament, we've got a new government, and the funding is still going to do that. I put that as, that goes on the ship. the trophy shelf for steps towards ecoside. To understand that decision-making from Labor, is that to do with Queensland politics? There's a state election coming up, isn't there?

Well, there's a Victorian election coming up in November. Then there's a March New South Wales election next year. They're the two that are coming up. But surely they would all want climate change policies, wouldn't they? We've just got three Greens MPs. elected in the lower house of Queensland running on an overt climate social justice policy right and we took two spots from the Libs and one spot from Labor running on a climate justice social justice platform it goes to show if you've got a bit of courage and you're willing to speak to

your principles and stick by your principles that labour could actually deal with the climate and win elections at the same time and that includes in Queensland yeah but I heard that those three Queensland Greens, they did this enormously, you know, three year long actually get involved in your community, run soup kitchens, help out the people for three years. That sounds like a lot of work to get up those policies. Like, I don't know, it might not be worth it. Well, not only is it in a good way of making people realise that politics can actually be about connections and be about real and people can actually be a politician and care. So it kind of reinvigorates the belief in politics,

but it's a bloody good way of winning seats, as it turns out. As you found out. Working in the long term in your community and showing you carry the... Turns out, who would have thought, that's a nice way of winning seats? And that might be better than getting a $5 million donation from a fossil fuel corporation. It actually might be a better long-term way of doing politics.

Well, thank you for helping being part of our Let's Solve the World problems week on the Chaser Report. And good luck in Parliament. Yeah, cheers, Charles. Thanks. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. Well, Chelsea, certainly solved the problem of needing a podcast episode for today.

Yes. Thank you very much. And I didn't have to do anything. Yeah, and tomorrow we've got Dr. David Smith. Yes. He's going to talk all about, well, Trump's in trouble. Biden's in trouble. They're all in trouble, yeah.

It's all doomed. It's like Game of Thrones, but there's no winner. It's how it's looking over there at the moment. And that's tomorrow. Our gear is from Road Microphones. We're part of the A-Cast Creator Network. See you tomorrow.