Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister needs to take climate science as seriously as he's taking the coronavirus science. Our summers are now twice as long as our winters in Australia. The climate crisis is hitting us now. It's devastating Australia and it's devastating the economy. We're experiencing towering infernos, ranging floods, record heatwaves and toxic air pollution. People have died, livestock have died, crops have been wiped out and entire towns have been pushed to the limit. This is happening at one degree of global warming, and today in estimates the Bureau of Meteorology have confirmed that we are on track to closer to four degrees of global warming under this Prime Minister in Australia. When experts advised him on the coronavirus, the Prime Minister swung into action immediately and came up with an urgent plan but, when experts advise the Prime Minister on the climate crisis, he not only does nothing but knowingly makes the problem worse. The Prime Minister had treated the coronavirus the same way he's treating the climate crisis, we'd all be infected by now.

It's time to understand that this is an urgent problem and we need climate action now—not in 2050, not in 2040, but right now. It is only going to get worse. What Australia has experienced this summer will pale in comparison to what is to come. The Prime Minister is putting Australian lives at risk. We need to start responding to the climate crisis the same way we are responding to the coronavirus, the way countries responded in World War II when there was the threat of invasion. The climate crisis needs a whole-of-government, whole-of-parliament and whole-of-society effort.