Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

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That this House:

(1) notes the:

(a) Government has accepted the Climate Change Authority's independent advice and has set Australia's climate change target at a range of between 62 to 70 per cent on 2005 emissions;

(b) release of the National Climate Risk Assessment, which found that no Australian community will be immune from climate risks that will be cascading, compounding and concurrent; and

(c) release of the Department of the Treasury's modelling on 18 September, which found Australia's ambitious and achievable plan to reduce emissions will support continued economic growth, higher living standards and employment, including 2.3 million more people being employed by 2035, and Australia's economy being up to $2 trillion worse off cumulatively by 2050 compared to a disorderly transition scenario;

(2) recognises the Government is delivering on its promises which Australians voted for to act on climate change, upgrade our energy system and seize the economic opportunity before our nation; and

(3) calls on the Opposition to leave the climate wars in the past, solve its internal divisions and join the rest of the Parliament in taking meaningful action on climate change.

My electorate of Griffith is a diverse one—young families alongside older Australians, university students, thriving culturally and linguistically diverse communities, small business owners, healthcare workers, people getting by on a little and people with much more—and while this diversity leads to a range of views on many issues it became clear through my door knocking on the lead-up to the last election of almost 15,000 homes in my electorate that there is one issue most people and Griffith agree on—that is, that climate change is a real and clear and absolutely present danger for us globally, across Australia and locally in my community of Griffith.

The people in my community didn't need to wait to read the recently released national climate risk assessments to see the risks that climate change poses to our community. They've shovelled sand into countless sandbags at depots while exhausted and shovelled mud out of their homes after floods in 2011 and again in 2022 with broken hearts. Both flood events were meant to be one-in-100-year events. They occurred just 11 short years apart. Large parts of my community, in suburbs like South Brisbane, West End and Woolloongabba, were inundated in these devastating floods, with people losing so much.

The National Climate Risk Assessment was a grim confirmation of what we already know. No Australian community will be immune from climate risks, which will be cascading, compounding and concurrent. Lee, a constituent from my community of Camp Hill, recently shared with me:

It was really not until nine years ago, as our grandchildren started to arrive—we have seven of them now—that I started to read seriously about climate science and began to appreciate the existential crisis that we are … facing.

Sophie, another constituent, from Greenslopes, who is worried about our shared future, noted: 'Climate change is already reshaping our lives with more extreme heatwaves, bushfires, floods and storms, and it's only getting worse.'

While we can no longer avoid climate impacts, every action we take today towards our climate goal of net zero by 2050 can help avoid the worst impacts on Australians. I'm proud to be part of a government that knows climate change is real. This government doesn't ignore the experts. We listen to the science and we act in Australia's best national interests. That's why we've acted on the advice of the Climate Change Authority. Recently we announced that we have accepted the Climate Change Authority's advice that Australia's 2035 emissions target be 62 to 70 per cent, a target that is responsible, responsive to the science, backed by a practical plan to get there and built on proven technology. Since May 2022, we've added over 18 gigawatts of renewables, wind and solar, to the grid. Wind and solar capacity is up 45 per cent since we came in to government. That's more than four times the capacity of the Snowy hydro scheme. As for our cheaper home battery policy, over 100,000 batteries have now been installed across the country, with more on the way.

Australia has everything we need to succeed to get to net zero: the resources, the technology, the people and the will. But we need leadership, not political games. While this government gets on with the job of fighting for Australia's future, the opposition continues to fight with itself. I knew, coming in to this parliament, that there would be many debates and differences of opinion, but I never imagined we would still see arguments about the validity of climate change. We have a Leader of the Opposition vowing to oppose any attempt to legislate Australia's climate targets. Before that, she said the coalition doesn't believe in setting targets at all, in government or in opposition. That's not leadership; that's abandoning responsibility. We have the member for Hume describing emissions targets as 'a wrecking ball through the economy', even as independent modelling shows the exact opposite. That's not leadership; that's fearmongering in defiance of the facts. The member for New England dismisses the science outright, calling climate action 'a ludicrous proposition with net zero effect'. That's not leadership; that is wilful ignorance.

Australians deserve better. They deserve a parliament that treats their future with seriousness, not slogans. They deserve a plan that creates good, secure jobs, lowers energy bills and ensures our kids and our grandkids inherit a liveable planet. The Albanese Labor government is delivering exactly that. We're listening to the science, investing in people and acting in the national interest. We are determined to leave the climate wars in the past and to build a clean, reliable and affordable energy future for all Australians.

So I call on those opposite: leave behind the denial, the delay and the division and join with us in taking meaningful action on climate change, because the cost of inaction is too great and the opportunity before us is too important to waste another decade, because the science is clear, the economics are clear and the Australian people are clear—they want progress, not politics.

The choice before us is simple. We can lead the world in the clean energy future, or be left behind by it. The Albanese Labor government chooses leadership for our communities, for our economy and for the generations ahead.

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