Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In scenes all too familiar to Australians, my community watched with dismay at the devasting bushfires in Victoria this summer. As blazes tore through the state, I was incredibly proud to learn that our very own North Shore volunteer brigades answered the call for help. Congratulations to Huw Bradshaw from the North Shore Lorikeet for reporting on their journey. As Huw reported, several Ku-ring-gai volunteers travelled to places including Yarck in the Goulburn Valley to protect vulnerable communities and their properties. In the great tradition of Australian firefighting and community service, they put their own lives at risk to help fellow Australians. It's what we do, and it's what we need to keep doing as the devastating impacts of climate change usher in weather events that are more severe and more frequent than ever before.

Today is 4 February, Extreme Heat Awareness Day. It's critical that we properly plan for what's ahead, but it's also critical that we properly tackle the causes of the problem. We can't protect communities from extreme heat and catastrophic bushfires while we literally pour fuel on the fire. Making climate change worse by approving new fossil fuel projects is not part of our plan.

I offer my sincere thanks to our Ku-ring-gai volunteer firefighters for their service, and I call on this place to do everything it can to protect those who answer the call by mitigating the risks, helping to build more resilient communities and ending the approval of new fossil fuel projects.