By Senator Steph Hodgins-May
Across Victoria and Australia, people are facing unimaginable loss. As I write this, families are still sifting through the remains of their homes. Livelihoods have gone up in flames. People are exhausted, and they are rightly fed up with being told to simply be "resilient" every summer while the world burns around them.
We know these bushfires aren't just natural disasters. This is climate collapse in real time, driven by massive coal and gas corporations more interested in shareholder returns than community safety. Meanwhile, the two major parties continue to protect fossil fuel profits instead of protecting our communities.
The government knows the science. For decades, experts have warned that digging up and burning coal and gas is like pouring petrol on a fire. They've told us clearly that if we keep fuelling the climate crisis, disasters will become more frequent, more extreme, and more deadly. That reality is now tearing through towns summer after summer-while governments continue to reward fossil fuel corporations with billions in subsidies and tax breaks.
When a nurse or a teacher pays more tax than multinational gas exporters like Woodside or Santos, the system isn't broken; this is how it's designed to work - putting profits over people and the planet.
The response from Labor has been a masterclass in corporate capture. Since taking office, Labor has approved more than 30 new coal and gas projects, and greenlit more offshore gas exploration in the Otway Basin-just off the coast of the very region where my own sister is on the ground, fighting fires alongside brave volunteers and firefighters.
While families are forced into evacuation centres or sleeping in their cars, our government continues handing out new approvals to fossil fuel corporations. Insurance premiums are skyrocketing, yet the government refuses to tax gas exports to help pay for the damage. It is an obscene betrayal to leave communities to pick up the pieces while corporations continue to profit from the destruction.
The Greens have put forward a clear solution: no new coal and gas, and a 25% tax on any future gas exports. This isn't just about revenue, it's about making the polluters pay for the mess they create. For too long, these corporations have had a free ride, pillaging our resources and cooking the planet while the public is left with the bill. A gas export levy would raise the billions needed to rebuild communities, fund genuine climate resilience, and deliver a just transition to renewables.
While Labor continues to lock in a future of worsening disasters, what gives me hope is the extraordinary courage on the ground - firefighters, first responders and volunteers risking everything to protect their neighbours. But courage should not have to compensate for political failure. We cannot keep asking communities to shoulder the burden of climate collapse while our government refuses to take on the corporations driving it.
The Greens stand with everyone affected. Recovery, shelter and support must come first. Extreme weather events will keep coming, and every day we delay bold climate action, communities are exposed to deadlier disasters.
That's why we will continue to push for an end to all new coal and gas projects, ambitious climate targets informed by science - not the coal and gas lobby - and properly funded climate resilience and adaptation at the community level so people aren't left to bear the cost of disasters fueled by tax-dodging polluters.
This summer has been another season of loss. But we do not have to accept government inaction and corporate destruction as inevitable. We can act. We must act. And we will stand with communities every step of the way.
