Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2013 and related bills. As our leader, Senator Milne, has articulated, the Greens will be and are opposed to the repeal of the carbon package. We believe that the future of our country depends on our addressing the biggest emergency that we face: the climate change emergency.

The package of legislation that this chamber passed not that long ago did set Australia on the path to addressing climate change, and it will be a sad day when this repeal legislation goes through. Future generations will look back and ask, 'What did you do to this country when you repealed this legislation?' And they will condemn this place for that action. This legislation takes us backwards. As I said, future generations will condemn us. While this government try to confect a budget emergency, they lose sight of the fact that we are facing a climate emergency in this country and globally.

The coalition want you to ignore the fact that climate is having an increasing impact on our lives. We cannot say that it is something that will affect us only in future. It is impacting on us now. Just ask the population of Kiribati whether they think climate change is real. I do not think they would be searching around and buying land elsewhere if their homes were not literally washing away. The coalition like to ignore the science but it is irresponsible to jeopardise the future of this planet, its people and its species. Last night in this chamber Senator Macdonald tried to paint the picture that climate change is not occurring. He likes to mess around with quotes on the science, and he misquoted the UK Met Office and he quoted media that was spinning the UK Met Office's results. He tried to imply that the temperature had not risen for the last 16 years. I do note that the particular article Senator Macdonald read from quoted a scientist about a period of time and then put ' . . . ' before continuing to put other quotes in place. In other words, it did not tell the full story. When I looked at what the UK Met Office actually said in that particular quote, they said:

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading … Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

And it goes on from there. So, Senator Macdonald and members of the coalition, when you are quoting make sure you are quoting in context. He made other misquotes last night that I will address later.

Acting on climate change this decade is absolutely critical if we are to protect our oceans, our environment, our agriculture and our children's and grandchildren's futures. The most effective and most affordable way to reduce our emissions is to have a price on pollution and a market mechanism like the one contained in the Clean Energy Act and the package of bills that passed through this place not that long ago, which this government, ably assisted by the Palmer United Party, are now rushing to destroy—again, to be condemned by future generations.

Clearly, this government is determined to assist business to wring every last drop of profit out of the fossil fuel dinosaur industry while condemning and putting every obstacle in the way of clean, green energy such as renewable energies and the type of industry and development that both Senator Milne and Senator Ludlam talked about yesterday. We now have cities in Australia competing to see who can be the first to put in solar-thermal. That is the sort of industry we should be putting in place now, not more fossil fuel developments.

Without a price on pollution Australia has no effective action to reduce emissions. We will increase the burden of climate change on everyone and everything in our world. The situation across all of my portfolios is getting worse with the increasing climate emergency. Our farmers, particularly mine in Western Australia, are already feeling the impacts of climate change, as is our marine life and our first peoples living in low-lying areas in the Torres Strait and in remote Australia. They are just a few examples. It is time to listen to the people of Australia, who know our country is facing an enormous threat—the threat of climate change. It is a threat made worse because of the dinosaur policies of the coalition government.

Look at some of the other comments made last night. Senator Macdonald referred to the Scott Reef, misquoting scientists yet again. He implied that the scientists looking at the some of the destruction of the coral around the Scott Reef were denying climate change. You only have to look at the comments they made to realise that our coral reefs are in severe trouble from climate change. I just do not understand why people continue to deny climate change. I do not understand why they do not take into account the impact climate change is going to have on their descendants—on their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren, who perhaps will never be able to see a functional, intact coral reef. There are plenty of other impacts on coral reefs, such as overfishing and pollution, but climate change and ocean warming and ocean acidification are having a devastating impact on our remaining coral reefs. Senator Macdonald last night could have quoted some more of what scientists from AIMS were saying about Scott Reef. They said:

While it is encouraging to see such clear recovery, we need to be mindful of the fact that the coral recovery at Scott Reef still took over a decade. If, as the climate change trend suggests, we start to see coral bleaching and other related disturbances occurring more frequently, then reefs may experience a ratcheting down effect, never fully recovering before they suffer another major disturbance.

Clearly our marine life is coming under increased threat, and the longer we delay action the more its ability to adapt will be being diminished over time.

Thirty per cent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is ultimately absorbed by the ocean—a process that results in our seas becoming more acidic. Research released just a couple of months ago on Papua New Guinea's coral reefs conducted by the James Cook Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Geographic Society—all august organisations—found that fish are losing their survival instincts, even becoming attracted to the smell of their predators, that fish swim further from shelter and are more active and that fish appear to have failed to adapt to being exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide. Clearly we cannot expect our environment to take blow after blow and still continue to bounce back. Clearly increased carbon dioxide levels are having impacts beyond what we even thought they could have. We are even changing the behaviour of fish, and we still do not know all the impacts on the natural environment.

Last summer those Western Australians in Perth knew it was very hot. We had some of our hottest days on record. We had day after day where temperatures rose above 40 degrees. For some it was easy enough to turn up the air conditioning, but for a lot of people it was an enormously stressful time. Among other things, these prolonged hot periods are responsible for a rise in the number of heat-related deaths. The greatest impact is on our most vulnerable—the frail and the elderly—but low-income households are also feeling the pressure. Those who are the worst off in our community are unable to switch on the air conditioner like others do and pretend that climate change does not exist. The clean energy package that the Greens negotiated compensated low-income families for these short-term increases. It was a fair package that took into account the pressures on those who are at the lowest end of the income stream, who find it the hardest to adapt to the changing circumstances. Often they live in rented houses that are not economic to retrofit. This package helped compensate people to enable them to deal with the price on carbon.

We need to move now and not delay our response to some far off date in the future. It is time Australia woke up to the fact that climate change is here, it is real and it is impacting on our lives now. We need to be taking action now. We need to be looking at the changes we make now and how climate change will impact on people into the future. Those living in poverty, single parents and older Australians were helped, and are helped, by the clean energy package. They are compensated. What do we think the impact in the future is going to be as climate change really does kick in? It will be too late then to say that perhaps we should have taken some action in the past. Who is going to compensate those people who are affected? This government are not interested in how our poorest families will cope. We know that they do not care about the most vulnerable people in our country—otherwise they would not be dumping young Australians onto no income support at all; they would not be introducing their cruel budget measures. To cry crocodile tears now that a price may adversely impact on pensioners, on single parents and on our other most vulnerable members of our community is to do just that—cry crocodile tears. They do not care. Their budget clearly articulates that. It clearly picks on single parents, with three cuts in the budget to single parents alone. It deeply affects older Australians, ripping $80 to $100 per week from them into the future. It clearly impacts on people with disabilities, dumping them off DSP and onto Newstart; and, as I said, it dumps young people onto no income support. So do not pretend you care about the most vulnerable people. Do not use them as an excuse to dump action on climate change. That is what you are doing. You are using the most vulnerable in our community to dump action on climate change.

And then of course we have Direct Action. 'Direct inaction' or 'indirect no action' would be a better title for that particular package. It is a high-cost, narrow, government controlled scheme intended to replace the existing market-driven, economy-wide, lowest cost method of reducing harmful greenhouse emissions. There is simply no comparison between 'indirect inaction' and the market mechanism and what the clean energy package delivers. It is not a viable replacement for carbon pricing and it is vastly inferior to existing law. Direct Action is very expensive. It will be a white elephant. It is laughable to imagine that you can replace the comprehensive package that is in place now with Direct Action. It will go back to the bad old days of ill-placed and ill-founded plantations, streamlining and planting a few trees.

The abolition of the clean energy package and the implementation of Direct Action will lead to a $22 billion deterioration in the budget position. When we stop to consider this, it becomes obvious how reckless the government is being economically and with the future of our planet, our community and our plant and animal species. In its mad rush to squeeze every last dollar out of the old dinosaur fuels, this government leaves a huge cost for our children and future generations to pay instead. This budget emergency is a confected panic, designed to justify unbelievably harsh and unfair cuts to our most vulnerable while the government ignores the planet emergency and the climate emergency. This is not the way of the future. If we do not take action now, we will lose entire species and habitats. All that we are gaining is more dangerous extreme weather events that threaten our communities and our families.

In the meantime, what is this government doing? It is facilitating big business and big polluters. It is ignoring the impact of climate change on our community, on our futures and on our fellow species. This government has no credibility when it comes to environmental management—protecting our land, water and oceans. One of this government's first moves when it came to power was to get rid of marine protected areas. But it said, 'We didn't get rid of them, we just got rid of the management plans.' That was cleverly designed to make it look as if the government was doing something. But all they are is boundaries on a map. There is no protection for our marine protected areas. The government is busy handing back environmental controls to the states. It does not care about our environment and our communities; it only cares about handing the keys to the Treasury to big business and to the polluters.

The government took $483 million out of Landcare in the current budget and handed it over to the Green Army. That is not an environmental program. It has taken away other important land management packages such as the biodiversity package. There is a range of programs that have been kick-started with income from a price on carbon. But the sad reality is that most of them have already disappeared or will falter when the government rips up the architecture of sound climate management, of making sure that we are dealing with this climate emergency. This is not forward thinking. This is a government that looks backwards, not forwards into the future. This is a bad step.

Despite the minister's rhetoric—'We have plans in place for land based abatement'—the sorts of changes that are needed will not be delivered. This will undermine the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, which has identified savanna burning and other land management mechanisms that require a decent price on carbon in order to be profitable. This government is not only undermining sound change; it is also undermining the economic development of Aboriginal communities who are not only funded for managing their land but also contribute to reducing our carbon footprint. The tenders offered through the Direct Action program will be much less than what is required to make Aboriginal land management effective in reducing our carbon footprint. It is now extremely clear that the carbon abatement— (Time expired)