Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to address the motion moved by Senator McKim. Australians deserve action on climate change. It was the Albanese government that commissioned Australia's first-ever comprehensive national climate risk assessment, and it was our government that released the first pass assessment in March 2024. That report identified 56 nationally significant climate risks and began a conversation about how we continue to prepare our communities, the economy and our environment for the future.

The final stage of this assessment and its accompanying national adaptation plan is well advanced. This work has involved extensive public consultation, with more than 180 submissions from across government, industry, the community and First Nations groups, and it is currently before the cabinet and subject to the appropriate and customary confidential cabinet processes. As part of the assessment, 11 priority risks have been identified, covering the natural environment, food and agriculture, infrastructure, regional communities, health, supply chains and our economy. It is serious work of government, and we are getting on with it. We take the climate crisis seriously because Australians are already living with more frequent and severe weather events. Every fraction of a degree of warming makes these impacts worse. That is why we have legislated ambitious but achievable emissions reduction targets of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2050, and we are on track to meet them.

Contrast that with what's happening in the Liberal and National parties. Just last week, Liberal National Party of Queensland members voted to call on their federal party to abandon its commitment to net zero. Similar motions have passed in the Western Australian and the South Australian Liberal branches. Senior coalition figures like Andrew Hastie and Barnaby Joyce are openly campaigning to scrap net zero altogether. In WA we've seen public feuds between Andrew Hastie and state Liberal leader Basil Zempilas after Hastie's own members in the division of Canning pushed a motion—