Senate debates

Tuesday, 12 November 2019

Matters of Public Importance

Australian Bushfires: Climate Change

6:49 pm

Photo of Eric AbetzEric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

True leadership does not seek to conflate the issue of climate change and the fire emergency that our country is currently experiencing. Well may the former speaker, the Greens senator, indicate to us that somebody said that in their 30 years, they had never seen such fires. I remind the honourable senator and the person who spoke those words that, in fact, Australia has been around for a lot longer than 30 years. Indeed, let's have a look at the history of fire and the history of drought within our country.

The Federation drought that lasted some eight years saw the great Murray River reduced to a chain of puddles. There were no irrigation schemes then, no big factories taking out the water and no suburbs taking out the water, yet it was reduced to a chain of puddles. Those of us who actually have bothered to study the history of our great country and its history with fire would be aware that, in 1851, there was a huge fire that crossed the landscape, causing huge devastation. There was the Black Saturday fire in Victoria in 2009, when 173 people were killed and 4,500 square kilometres were devastated. There were the Ash Wednesday fires in Victoria and South Australia in 1983, which burnt 5,200 square kilometres, destroying some 2½ thousand homes and killing 75 people. In my home state of Tasmania, there were the Black Tuesday fires of 1967, with over 60 people killed and 1,400 homes destroyed. And the 1939 Black Friday fire in Victoria burnt 20,000 square kilometres, destroyed more than 700 homes and resulted in 71 fatalities. Australian history is, sadly, a history of fire and the devastation that it causes. Indeed, the royal commission into the Victorian bushfires of 1939 indicated basically a 20-year period of dryness prior to those devastating fires.

The minimisation of fire and the fire risk is a matter of concern to anybody who loves our country but, in response to the suggestion that somehow our coalmines are causing the fires, as the previous speaker indicated, I invite the Greens to explain to us the fires that I've just listed. Were they caused by Australian coalmines? I don't think so. When the white man settled Tasmania, they discovered that southern Tasmania had been badly burnt. The landscape had been devastated by fire. Was that courtesy of Senator Faruqi's coalmines? I hardly think so. At this time when men and women are perishing, when houses and livestock are being destroyed, I invite people to have a sense of civility and decency in relation to these issues. Let's let our hearts go out to those who are experiencing this devastation and this loss. Let's let our thoughts and prayers go out to them and to those who are fighting the fires, who are on the front line, who are doing battle, and who are risking their own lives in the service of our fellow Australians.

The Greens do themselves an injustice by bringing up a topic such as this today and seeking to conflate two issues, knowing full well that they are trying to get a very cheap, opportunistic headline in circumstances that do them and their party no credit whatsoever. On this side of the chamber today, our hearts, thoughts and prayers all go out to those devastated by the fires. (Time expired)

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