Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

My community has the right to be and is pretty angry about 60 Minutes reporting of the Climate Council of Australia's claims that Shepparton and Mooroopna, in my electorate, will be uninhabitable due to the impact of climate change and that 90 per cent of properties will be uninsurable by 2030. We've some floods in our region. Shepparton and Mooroopna were built where the Goulburn and Broken rivers meet. We had major floods in 1916, 1917, 1939, 1956, 1958, 1974, 1993 and the recent ones, when I was first elected member in 2022. What we noticed about those floods was that the estates that had been built after 1974 had been designed and built in such a way that, whilst there was water all through the parkland and through the roads, the floods actually didn't inundate any of the houses. So I think it's irresponsible for this Climate Council report to make such a broad-sweeping claim. When you look at some of the evidence, it looks very much like a desktop study.

Climate change is an issue for us to have a serious conversation about—adaptation, energy transition and whatever that looks like. And it needs to be done with a basis in reality. But scaremongering like this and trying to frighten people in my community about their area being uninhabitable by 2030 is just not on and not in keeping with a sensible and rational debate.

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