Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I see part of my role as the member for Brisbane as being to raise the voices of those who often feel unheard. For a bill on climate change, it seemed appropriate to give a voice to young people. I'd like to bring attention to the words of Mirah Larkin and Grace Vegesana, two young members of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who today delivered letters from young activists to Parliament House. Eighteen-year-old Mirah said:

Young people across Australia are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. The letters we have brought to Parliament today for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are filled with the stories of young people facing bushfires, flooding, and heat waves. But young people are resilient, we are hopeful and we're not going to stop demanding bold, ambitious climate action from our political representatives.

Twenty-three-year-old Grace said:

Millions of people voted for action on climate change this election, and now the Albanese Government needs to tackle the number one cause of the climate crisis by ending coal and gas expansion. We do not need any new coal mines or gas wells to transition to 100% renewable energy.

She continued:

The Albanese Government should listen to Traditional Owners standing against gas expansion on their Country from Kimberly in Western Australia, to Narrabri in North West NSW and the Beetaloo in the Northern Territory.

It's young people who will feel the greatest impacts from the decisions that we make on this important bill, the Climate Change Bill 2022. We're seeing a growing trend of the increasing politicisation of the youth of Australia, which is great to see. Increasing engagement of new youth leaders in our political system is not just beneficial; it's essential. However, I can't help but reflect on what has led to the trend. The mobilisation of so many youth voices is a direct consequence of decades of inaction on climate change, failing social justice policies and a cost-of-living crisis. It's people like Mirah and Grace whose views we should be foregrounding when we consider the lifelong effects of the decisions we make in this place and how they will impact current and future generations.

As we all should know, the effects of climate change will be felt worldwide and in our local communities. At the local level, my electorate of Brisbane recently suffered a cataclysmic climate event. Maiwar, the Brisbane River, has long been a symbol of our city's beauty. But, as the planet warms, it becomes more and more of a danger to us. In the most recent flooding, parts of our city that had never flooded before were completely underwater. Not just the Brisbane River but the inner brooks and creeks, which define many parts of my electorate, flooded and caused devastating damage to local communities. We've been told that these are once-in-a-lifetime events, despite this being the third such event within the lives of many of the residents of Brisbane. These once-in-a-lifetime events will only increase in severity and frequency, and the people of Brisbane know this.

During the course of our election campaign, climate change was far and away the most commonly raised issue by people that we spoke to in our community. And that was before the floods of February and March of this year. I recently met with constituents who live in the Brisbane suburb of Stafford, who were, and continue to be, impacted by these floods. They told me about entire metres of land on their properties being washed away into the Kedron Brook, a creek which usually resembles a walking track with a small stream parting both sides. As sediment built up along the stream, the water rose higher and higher, forcing people to flee their homes without knowing what would happen to them. A floating restaurant, destroyed in the 2011 floods and never properly repaired, washed onto the riverbank and destroyed a whole section of the riverside bikeway. Entire swathes of the suburb of Milton were completely submerged. The Toombul shopping centre—while outside my electorate—is used by thousands of residents of Brisbane, and it was damaged so badly that it was not able to reopen.

We were told by volunteers at the Northey Street City Farm that the office building they had built—specifically above the 1974 flood line—was, in this flood, almost completely inundated with floodwater. But our communities are resilient. People across the electorate opened their homes and their hearts, and did everything they could to help rebuild their communities in the wake of catastrophe. The kindness and generosity of these people continues to give me hope for the future. But we should not have been in this situation. We should not have had to experience a disaster fuelled by climate inaction. We should not have to rely on the resilience of the community to rebuild every single time one of these climate-induced disasters occurs. It is our responsibility in this place to ensure that we take the climate action that is needed to prevent this crisis becoming even worse. We are running out of time.

Something that we need to remember when we discuss this issue is that the measures we're taking are not reversing climate change. The time to stop exacerbating global warming is long gone. After almost a decade of government inaction—in our country, which is one of the worst polluters in the world—we missed our chance to stop climate change in its tracks. This is the frankly depressing reality that we now find ourselves in. Cataclysmic weather events are occurring with increasing frequency and severity, and they're going to continue. All we can hope to do now is prevent climate change from getting any worse. If we want to have any hope of preserving natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef, to have the chance to build infrastructure which can withstand worsening climate events, and give current and future generations the best chance of survival, we need to start right now.

Supporting this bill is a first step towards that. I'm glad to see some action on the most pressing issue of our time, but what we really need to do is stop new coal and gas. As long as we keep opening new coalmines and new gas fields, we are making the climate crisis worse. The Greens will keep pushing the government to take this step, which is crucial for the survival of all of us and our planet—and we cannot lose hope. What gives me hope is that people from across this country, and especially young people, are motivated and are ready to fight. They know that this is not the end of the road for addressing climate change; it is just the beginning. We have many battles ahead of us, and much of the hill still to climb. We need a moratorium on new coal and gas projects. We need to put people before the profits of BHP and Santos. We need to end the billions in taxpayer handouts that the fossil fuel industry receives. The real fight starts now. Climate activists are ready. Young people are ready. The community is ready, and we are ready.

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