Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question, and I'll ask Minister McBain to add to my comments. But we are certainly very conscious of the cost of climate change. It is real. It is real, and in recent months I, of course, have been to regional South Australia, visiting drought areas; I have been to the Mid North Coast, where there have been floods; and I went to South Australia's Kangaroo Island just last week, seeing firsthand the impact of climate change. There is no question that, whilst you can't say every single weather event in Australia is because of climate change, what you can say is that the science told us that there would be more events and they would be more intense, and that is what we are seeing playing out.

There are a range of funds—including the announcement that I made last week about changes to the RIC program—being made available so that the issue of resilience and investment can be made to that program for issues which are unprecedented, of course. In South Australia at the moment what you have is a combination of events. You have the floodwater flowing down through the Murray-Darling Basin impacting, with sediments being washed into and nutrients out of the water there, but the thing that's really having an impact is that the water is about two degrees higher than it normally would be at this time of the year. That is having an impact on the environment, which is having an impact, therefore, on our economy.

So I think the member is quite right to point towards investing upfront. That's something my government is looking at in a range of areas, as well as providing for local infrastructure programs that the minister might want to talk about.

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