House debates

Monday, 28 February 2011

Constituency Statements

Climate Change

10:52 am

Photo of Craig ThomsonCraig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise to talk about climate change and the need to act now. We are past making excuses. It is past the time for saying that these things are too difficult. Saying no to action on climate change is not an answer. We will not stop the temperature of the seas from rising by just saying, ‘No, we are not going to look at it.’ You do not stop the effects of climate change by simply putting your head in the sand and not acting. We need to act and we need to act now. We need to do it for children, our children’s children and the communities in which we live.

I live on the Central Coast of New South Wales. I think everyone here would agree with me that it is the most beautiful part of Australia. Of course, one of the downsides of living in the most beautiful part of Australia is that it is a very fragile environment. We have mountains to the west, a great big lake in the middle and a coastline on the edge. My electorate, more than many, has seen the effects of climate change. You only need to go to Cabbage Tree Bay at Norah Head to see its effects. Storm surges are becoming more frequent on the east coast of Australia. My electorate is now affected by storm surges every two years. At Cabbage Tree Bay we have houses that are falling into the water. They are not falling into the water because of one event; they are falling into the water because of constant changes to the environment that are affecting communities right up and down the east coast.

At North Entrance there are houses that have had most of their backyards washed away. There was a beautiful house that I went to see a year or so ago, after the last storm surge, which had had a great big beautiful glass fence that you could now see washed somewhere out into the Pacific Ocean. The owners had lost six metres of their backyard. Wamberal, another beautiful suburb in my electorate, has lost many houses because of storm surges.

What we are seeing every day in our communities are the direct effects of climate change. What we need to do is make sure that we properly represent our communities. To properly represent our communities we need to face these challenges. We cannot just say, ‘No, we’re not going to deal with it,’ and, ‘These issues are too hard.’ If we do that we are letting down our communities, we are letting down our children and we are letting down our grandchildren. We need to act in relation to climate change. Now is the time to act; now is not the time to say no. We need to be taking steps to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect our environment so that beautiful electorates like Dobell remain as part of Australia and do not get washed out to sea. (Time expired)