Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

West Beach—so he got to see it firsthand. I think we are all deeply concerned by the widespread marine species deaths occurring in my home state. We have acted to provide the government with $14 million to support their response to this event, and the Premier put out a press release—I think it was yesterday—which set out the various parameters or bases of the assistance, which includes clean-up, coastal monitoring, small-business grants and so forth. I'm sure you're across the detail of it.

But I think there is a more profound problem here, which is that we know that the climate is changing, and we know that the best advice to date—I appreciate there is going to be a Senate inquiry, and scientists are also grappling with an event we've never seen before—tells us that, in part, a marine heatwave is one of the drivers behind this. We know our oceans are warming. I have spent a lot of my life on that coastline, and I can tell you— (Time expired)