Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today, we have a delegation of mayors, researchers and industry with us from across South Australia, visiting Canberra to talk about the South Australian algal bloom. They met today with the Prime Minister and the ministers for the environment, agriculture, emergency management, health and tourism.

The Albanese Labor government and the Malinauskas state Labor government have committed over $34 million combined to industry support, research and business supports.

Sadly, there is nothing that can be done to get rid of the algae or to prevent marine deaths. We just have to wait it out and support the impacted business, industries and the community to survive.

This is climate change in action. We have been warned for decades about marine heatwaves devastating marine environments, and now it is happening along with floods in Queensland, droughts and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo. Climate change is real.

Meanwhile, the Queensland LNP and the South Australian and Western Australian branches of the Liberal Party want to abandon net zero. We have a similar private members bill for debate in this place. It's time that those opposite realised that climate change is real. It's going to have significant impacts on our way of life, our environment and our economy. We can't just put our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. We need to work together to help Australia minimise and mitigate the effects of climate change that we are seeing right now.

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