Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the past 24 hours NASA scientists have been celebrating the successful crashing of a spaceship into an asteroid millions of kilometres from earth. It's been an historic test of humanity's ability to prevent a cosmic object one day devastating life on this planet. We have seen a 590-kilogram spaceship, around the size of a refrigerator, striking the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos, travelling at around 24,000 kilometres an hour. This happened about 11 million kilometres away from earth—fantastic! It cost US$324½ million. And yet, closer to home, you've got millions of kids starving.

I know these things are important. I understand that we, as a society, and NASA, as a scientific organisation, and the United States, as a world-leading country, need to do these things—to prevent, perhaps, what happened at the end of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, when a large rock struck the earth, ending the Cretaceous-Paleogene era, wiping out all those large animals which had dominated the earth for tens of millions of years. I know I'm getting old. I might be getting cranky. I'm probably both. I know that it's important to defend yourself. I understand that. You understand that, Deputy Speaker Wilkie. The price of peace is eternal vigilance. But US$801 billion was spent on arms in 2021 by America. Worldwide it was $2.1 trillion. And you've got kids in Africa starving. You've got mothers holding babes in arms, dying before their very eyes. This isn't just happening in isolated incidents. This is happening in thousands upon thousands of communities.

Australia is providing $15 million in emergency assistance in response to the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa and Yemen. This is a 10th of what the not-for-profit organisations said was needed. I do thank the government for providing this assistance. Last week I called on the government to provide $150 million, which is what the not-for-profits said was required as a base measure. Making the announcement, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific said that the Australian Council for International Development, ACFID, welcomed the announcement. He made that point and he talked about the global efforts to combat looming famine in affected parts of the world. Minister Conroy is right. I've always said that Australia should look after its backyard, the Indo-Pacific region, Europe should look after Africa, and North America—Canada, the US—should look after Latin, Central and South America. The poor people in those areas affected should be looked after by the globe's leading citizens and richer countries.

ACFID chief executive Marc Purcell said:

The Albanese government's response to the hunger crisis is a great start on Labor's stated commitment to being a responsible international citizen.

He's right. I acknowledge that. But it's a small start. Much more is going to need to be done. We need to step up and do it. Right now, 10,000 children are dying each day from hunger. That's the equivalent of an entire classroom of children dying in Australia every 3½ minutes. The COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing droughts and the war in Ukraine have created a perfect storm for a global food crisis. Since the beginning of the pandemic, hunger has increased by roughly 150 million people across the globe. Just think about that—150 million. Our population is around 25 million. It's six times our population. Jobs have been lost or made insecure, household budgets have tightened and supply chains have been disrupted, resulting in increased prices. I understand that Australian families are doing it hard—I get that—but the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, with four consecutive failed rainy seasons. Across the world, extreme weather events have damaged crops and livelihoods, drastically reducing people's ability to feed themselves. On top of that, we've got the invasion of Ukraine by Putin. It's an act of military bastardry. It's causing a devastating impact not only on Ukrainians but also on the world's most vulnerable by exacerbating the global food crisis and upsetting global food supply chains. The Russia-Ukraine war is being fought in the breadbasket of Europe.

When I wrote that op-ed last week in the Daily Telegraph, I sent it to my National Party colleagues. I was amazed by the response I got. People reached out to me. I've always known that I belonged to a compassionate party, and that certainly brought that home to me. Sometimes I think that our side of politics perhaps isn't always considered as compassionate as the other side of politics, if I can put it that way. But they are genuine. We need to do more, genuinely. We should, we must and, hopefully, we will.

As reported by Reuters last week, the European Union is divided on how to help poorer countries fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilisers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with—wait for it—EU green goals. I mean, really? You've got kids starving in the Horn of Africa and in Yemen, and you've got rich countries worrying about green goals? I mean, my God! What have we become as a society, as humanity? At a summit of EU leaders later in the week, the EU was planning a new initiative which would structurally decrease poorer nations' reliance on Russian fertilisers by helping them develop their own fertiliser plants. Okay, but at a meeting with EU envoys in that particular week in June, the EU commission explicitly opposed the narrative—listen to this—'warning that supporting fertiliser production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies'. That's what officials said. It just beggars belief. What bloody-mindedness! Are we really going to stand by and let people die for the sake of a woke agenda?

I do appreciate that fertiliser has an impact on the environment—yes. It requires energy—yes. But let me tell you, coming from a multigenerational farming family, I know it's also hugely effective in boosting the agricultural output. If you don't use fertiliser, you don't get the output that you require. I appreciate that the National Farmers Federation here in Australia said, through its chair Fiona Simson, that it could potentially do some things with food aid. That's to be encouraged. But right now, with double the population of Australia on the brink of famine—more, absolutely more—we cannot give up on finding a solution and offering our support, no matter what that may be. If it's money, well, so be it.

In a few weeks, a famine will be declared in Somalia. Soon to follow will be Afghanistan—and haven't we lost some lives there to make that country a better place?—Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. The threshold for a famine to be declared is extreme. Lots of people think that Africa's in famine all the time—it's not. Famine has been declared only twice this century—in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017. But this is a crisis point. This is an absolute crisis point. The last time a famine was declared in Somalia, of the more than one-quarter of a million people who lost their lives, 129,000 were children under the age of five. Half of the total death toll perished before a famine was declared. So, I call on the government to do what it can. I call on people of a good heart to do what they can. We must do more. We have to do more to save people's lives.