Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney-General inform the House of the implications of climate change for national security?

Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Blair for his question. Last night Dr Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the US, gave a statement entitled National intelligence assessment on the national security implications of global climate change to 2030 to a United States congressional committee. In his statement, he said:

From a national security perspective, climate change has the potential to affect lives (for example, through food and water shortages, increased health problems including the spread of disease, and increased potential for conflict), property (for example through ground subsidence, flooding, coastal erosion, and extreme weather events), and other security interests.

Dr Fingar specifically referred to the circumstances of Australia and New Zealand in his statement. In view of the significance of that statement, I table it.

Those views have also been outlined and formed by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who said in a report earlier this year called Taking a punch: building a more resilient Australia:

Climate change will compound the risks of disruption and have a direct influence on the type, scale and frequency of disasters and emergencies Australia will face, including increased flooding, more frequent and intense storms, lightning events and bushfires.

Indeed, last September, members interested—and that should be all of us—would recall the significant statements made by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, and also the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston. Mick Keelty said in his speech:

... if only some and not all of this occurs—

that is, the consequences of climate change—

climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century.

In responding to those speeches at the time, the then Minister for Defence, the current Leader of the Opposition, said—and appropriately so:

If you think about the security challenges that we face in the future, obviously, population shifts associated with any one of a number of causes including climate change is one of them.

That was a specific and an appropriate acknowledgement. It is now completely irresponsible for the opposition to effectively be running interference on measures to address climate change and to be avoiding the security challenges of climate change. The Rudd government is determined to confront these significant security challenges head on.