Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Climate pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels is rewriting the risk book on our weather. The National Climate Risk Assessment warned of more powerful and destructive storms, and that's what Cyclone Narelle was—a historic cyclone. Cyclone Narelle hit Australia four different times, striking three states as a category 3. This is the second time this has happened in our history, the last time being 2005, and it was a much bigger storm. This cyclone was born in the Coral Sea off the back of ocean temperatures in the Coral Sea in 2025 being the warmest on record. The warmest summer on record in the Coral Sea—the warmest ocean temperatures ever recorded—was in February 2026.

Then it made its way to Queensland and rivalled Cyclone Yasi as the most intense cyclone to ever make landfall as a category 5 cyclone in this nation's history. It then crossed the Northern Territory after they'd had a horrendous wet season of flooding and then reformed in Western Australia, eventually heading south and cutting its way across Western Australia to end in the Great Australian Bight and be subsumed by a big storm from the Southern Ocean. This is what climate change looks like, and it's because we refuse to act on climate change in places like this parliament that this is happening.

I especially feel really sorry for the community in Exmouth, who scored a direct hit—200 kilometre-an-hour winds. A big shout-out to them all from the Australian Senate today. The community's coming together. There's incredible energy there to rebuild. They're under immense pressure, especially going into tourism season over Easter. It's, of course, one of the premier places in Australia to go to now. I would like to give a special shout-out to the community, who are not only cleaning up and helping each other out but looking after the precious wildlife that suffered so terribly from the storm. If any senators have some spare money through their electoral allowances or otherwise, please donate to Balu Blue. You can go online. The work they're doing is absolutely amazing—heartbreaking scenes of hundreds of turtles, sea snakes, dead dolphins and all sorts of marine life washed up on the beach.

This is coming off the back of a second major climate event off the coast of Exmouth in the last 12 months. Those ocean temperatures off north-west WA down to Exmouth last year were record breaking. They recorded temperatures of around 36 degrees Celsius in the water. To give you an idea, the temperatures in the Coral Sea this year were 30 degrees. Above 26.5 degrees, you can get a tropical cyclone. Off WA, at the Montebellos, last year, they got to 38 degrees in the ocean. And, of course, we had catastrophic bleaching impacts on the Ningaloo World Heritage listed reef—absolutely one of the treasures of our country, not to mention the Montebellos and a bunch of others incredible reefs off WA. By the way, at the same time, we were having a mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef—the seventh mass coral bleaching in the last 15 years. Do you think we might be waking up to the fact that something is happening to our climate? Don't take my word for it. Tale the words of the hundreds of scientists who put together the National Climate Risk Assessment and warned us that, if we didn't act on climate change, this was going to be the future—a future of danger, destruction and suffering for our community and our precious biodiversity and wildlife.

It beggars belief that the National Party—for example, Senator Canavan—is calling for more oil and gas drilling in our oceans and more fossil fuel. You would think Queensland senators like you, Senator McDonald, would understand the threat these cyclones pose to our communities and the damage they're doing to our economy and agricultural businesses. Yet you go out there, ignore the science and call for more fossil fuel development at a time when we know we need to be transitioning to renewable energy.

While we're at it, why don't we tax the big gas corporations and their exports, like we should—we've been pushing for 20 years to do that—and spend that bloody money on helping our communities? They are suffering from the years that those corporations have profited from polluting our environment and our atmosphere and causing dangerous climate change.