Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As my flight made its descent into Canberra on Sunday night, I looked around, and most of my fellow passengers, like myself, were peering out the windows at the blankets and plumes of smoke that surrounded us. I was paying morbid attention because it was the closest that I had come to the almost 11 million hectares that have burnt across the country. Last night and today, as the smoke rolled into Canberra, I have felt even closer. I was away in Tasmania for most of January and very aware that I managed to have my summer holiday, when so many people didn't.

Our country has suffered so much—33 lives lost so far. And I say 'so far' because this fire season isn't over. Good people are no longer with us, people who'd been doing their best to fight for their homes and livelihoods, and the courageous firefighters paying the ultimate sacrifice as they tried to keep people and country safe. My heart aches for their families, their friends and their communities in the worst fire season that we have ever experienced as a country. My heart goes out to everyone who has lost their properties and their livelihoods. I salute everyone who has fought these fires and who has helped out in so many ways, donating their time, resources and money.

To the CFA, RFS and other volunteers who have put their lives on the line, day after harrowing day, during this bushfire crisis that shows no end, no signs of ending soon: all Australians owe you a massive debt of gratitude. And to the communities that are trying to rebuild from the ashes, to all the people across Australia who are trying to stay resilient during these times of physical, emotional and financial hardship, know that we are with you and we will not forget the task that lays ahead once this fire season is over.

In my home state of Victoria, five people so far have lost their lives, all in East Gippsland. I pay my deepest respects to Mick Roberts from Buchan and Fred Becker from Maramingo Creek, who died fighting the fires at their homes, and Forest Fire Management Victoria employees Mat Kavanagh, Bill Slade and David Moresi who were killed while on the job this bushfire season. I pay my condolences to their families and friends. I am just so sorry for your massive loss.

The losses in East Gippsland are almost unimaginable. East Gippsland is special. It retains the proportion of its land covered by forest, around 70 per cent, that Victoria had when First Nations people rightfully had custodianship over our land. I acknowledge the Gunnaikurnai people, in particular, who have seen so much loss and destruction of their country. Over 80 per cent of the forests of East Gippsland have been burnt. We have all been traumatised by seeing the evacuation of Mallacoota, the daytime darkness in Orbost and the fear and trauma etched into people's lives.

I spent my 20s campaigning to protect these forests. I've got to know many people in the region, including my good friend Jill Redwood who stayed and fought the fires that burnt through her place in Goongerah. Jill has been a CFA volunteer for over 20 years, and her account of fighting the fires was real heart-in-mouth stuff. She fought the fire engulfing her place single-handedly. She tells of hoses melting and pumps running out of fuel. She saved her house but had to suffer the heartbreak of the loss of some of her farm animals and the massive loss of wildlife and their forest habitat, which she has dedicated her life to protecting. Her Facebook posts about her experience in the fires ended with her saying that she was too sick from smoke to eat. But she was in a far better position than many other people, noting that beside the loss of life and property loss the biggest tragedy is the ecological Armageddon that is happening in East Gippsland. Jill is now out, with so many others, feeding and watering the surviving wildlife.

We have all lost so much—life, property, so much precious forest, so much wildlife—so much life that we are intimately part of and hold so dear, and we have lost our hope that maybe the climate crisis wouldn't be as bad as we thought it was going to be. We now know that the crisis is upon us, and it's shaping up to be as brutal as anyone had feared. For the first time, people in our big cities have felt the effects of this crisis on their health as the smoke haze hits hazardous levels. We have children being kept from playing outside, commuters wearing face masks in the streets and people being hospitalised due to respiratory stress.

This is no way to live, and we cannot accept this as the new normal. But the really scary thing about the losses of this summer is that they won't stop here. Unlike previous bad fire years, where we had the expectation that, yes, things would return to normal and it would be decades before a fire season like this returned, we know now that things are different. This is Australia at only one degree of warming. We are heading for three or four degrees, and yet Prime Minister Morrison and the coalition want to keep their heads in the sand and continue as though this is just normal. And Labor decided in the middle of the fire season that it was time to redouble their efforts to spruik our coal industries, as though it's not a fact that if we keep polluting our world we are headed for far more death and destruction in the years to come. Every life that is being mourned today, every family that has suffered tragedy, every community that is suffering the trauma of this summer will be multiplied as our climate crisis worsens. Time is no longer on our side. We no longer have the luxury of small steps or incremental change. Now is the time for bold action because if we don't start solving this crisis this summer will be just the beginning. In fact, if we let our planet get two, three or four degrees hotter, this summer will look like a walk in the park.

This summer's fire crisis has hit me hard. I've been campaigning for the world to wake up to the dangers of climate change for over 30 years, driven by fear of what was to come if we didn't act and hope that we would still act before it was too late. Our fears have been shown to be completely justified. They are materialising, and so that hope is pretty battered. But we have to stay optimistic. We have to believe in and commit to a path through this darkness and devastation, otherwise our condolences are hollow. We have to get through and acknowledge the grief, and then learn to walk a new path. That's the only way we can do justice to the immensity of our loss.

I have learnt some things over the last month that I think are valuable in helping us to do that. I've felt this summer's massive losses deeply because they parallel my own personal loss. My wife, Penny, died in September. As well as being the love of my life, Penny was one of Australia's leading climate scientists, and she worked at CSIRO for 30 years preparing regional climate projections—the science that lays out how our climate is changing across the country, and it has laid out the increasing risk of longer, more intense, more damaging fire seasons. I've discovered that grief isn't compartmentalised. I'm grieving for Penny and I'm grieving for our precious planet, particularly the forests and the wildlife that we both loved so much and campaigned so hard to protect. And, when I think of the people who lost loved ones in the fires, I can so easily imagine their devastating grief and loss because I've experienced the same randomness of the universe that has resulted in sudden, unexpected and unfathomable death.

I'm angry that Penny's climate science and our decades of campaigning seem to have been for naught right now. Penny was so fearful of what this summer was going to deliver, and I'm mortified that her fears have come to pass, but there's a tiny sense of relief that at least she was spared seeing them play out in such a devastating way. But maybe some of the other things I've learnt over the five months since Penny died can be useful in helping us work out how to deal with the losses of this summer and how to move onto our new path. I've learnt that expressing and acknowledging loss, bawling my eyes out and sharing the emotion with others is cathartic. I've learnt that you can never have too many hugs and that people reaching out to me with a simple, 'I'm so sorry,' is profound and touching and helps me know that I'm not alone.

So to everyone who has lost people they love, lost property, had their communities turned upside down and seen the destruction of country they love: I'm so sorry. I've learnt that grief is the flip side of love. I've learnt that our relationships make up a huge part of who we are and that nurturing and cherishing those relationships is core to our wellbeing. When Penny died, I didn't just lose her; I lost a massive part of myself—that part of my identity that was the love, the connection and the interplay between the two of us. And I realised how much the other relationships I have with friends, colleagues and acquaintances matter and are part of me too. So if expressing our grief for our losses of this summer can encourage people to reach out and to connect with and reconnect with people they love that's a powerful step on this new path that we are now walking together.

I've realised that these relationships, these connections, that are part of me don't just stop at connections with other humans. We are part of nature. All is one, and one is all. The profound grief that we are feeling about the loss of nature, the damage to precious landscapes and the billions of animals lost is because they are part of us and we are part of them, and we love them as we love ourselves. We can't just let them go and be sacrificed to the gods of greed and selfishness and the blatant, wilful vandals who are overheating our planet. We can but hope that, as more people feel this loss deeply and powerfully, it will motivate more of us to work to protect the rest of nature from the ravages of unbridled neoliberal capitalism.

Community and nature have to be our solace and our support to get through our climate and fire crises. We are survivors and have to walk our new path together. It's not what we had hoped for. It's challenging. But it's the path we are on and we just have to make the most of it. It's a new path that we have to encourage others to join us on. It's a new path that will lead us out of the sad lands, the badlands, and will honour and do justice to those and that which has been lost.

I remain optimistic. I'm grieving, I'm sad and I'm realistic about the challenges ahead—but I haven't given up. I believe in the resilience and the brilliance of humanity that we have seen so much of this summer from communities around Australia. And I believe in the resilience of nature. Surely those of us that recognise and understand the nihilistic path that we are on are going to continue to build our power so that we can share that power with all of humanity and nature to protect our future.

Australians are desperate for action to protect our climate and environment. I salute those climate activists who are in Canberra today, campaigning for a fossil-free, safe climate future and to stop our wildlife from sliding towards extinction. Together, we can achieve the sweet relief of a political cool change sweeping over us after the desiccating, hot headwinds that we are currently facing. It is never going to be too late. There is never going to be a time when we say, 'We just give up.' Yes, we are losing so much every day, month and year, and we need to acknowledge and grieve for those losses. And then we must continue our journey. Where there is life, there is hope.

I am motivated by my love for the world, my love for nature and my love for Penny to do what's necessary in my personal life, my community life and my political life to help achieve a healthy future. I know there are millions and billions of people around the world, including many in this place and in the other place, who feel likewise. We can and we must journey together on our new path until we have turned the corner and have created a brighter future for us all.