Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to speak for 20 minutes.

Leave granted.

I welcome this week’s release of the CSIRO report Climate change in the Asia-Pacific region, commissioned by the Climate Change and Development Roundtable. The roundtable, which is an international grouping of aid and environmental groups, including World Vision, Greenpeace, Caritas, Friends of the Earth, AngliCORD and Oxfam, brings home to us the unwelcome reality of climate change in our region. While its report speaks about the impacts of climate change on nearby countries and our obligations and responsibilities as a good neighbour and a significant contributor to climate change, tonight I want to focus the spotlight on climate change as it is already affecting one part of Australia.

The release of that report reminded me of some questions that I have asked the government about climate change impacts in the Torres Strait. During Senate estimates in May, I asked if the Australian Greenhouse Office had conducted any research on rises in sea levels specific to the Torres Strait region. The answer was no. Earlier, in February, I asked the Bureau of Meteorology whether there were any tidal gauges in the Torres Strait. Again the answer was no. The reason I asked those questions was that Torres Strait Island communities already suffer quite severe damage from flooding during king tides and from storm surges during cyclones. Now they face increasing risks from sea level rises owing to climate change. The islands of the Torres Strait are as vulnerable to sea level rises as any low-lying islands in the world, potentially even more so. Quite rightly, these communities want to know what the federal government is doing to mitigate the problems they already face and will face in the future with sea level rises.

The islands are dotted across the 150-kilometre international border between Australia and Papua New Guinea. They are scattered around 22,000 square kilometres and range from the largest, Prince of Wales, in the inner island group, to sandy coral cays of less than a hectare. Although only 14 islands are permanently inhabited, most are visited regularly, primarily by people on fishing and camping trips. Two are the very low lying mud islands of Boigu and Saibai. Some are low-lying coral cays such as Yorke, Poruma and Warraber. Almost 1,500 people live on these five islands, and they regularly have to contend with flooding and storm surge. So do communities on the fringes of the strait’s volcanic islands, most significantly Yam Island. All in all, there are more than 8,000 people, most of whom are Indigenous, already at risk.

Communities are often situated only metres from the beach, and some less than a metre above sea level. Parts of the interior of some of the low-lying islands are actually below sea level. High tides, strong winds and heavy rain earlier this year caused severe damage to half the region’s inhabited islands. Houses and other buildings were damaged and belongings destroyed, sewerage systems were flooded and rubbish was picked up and strewn throughout residential areas and into the sea. Emergency access to the islands was impossible.

On Yam Island, six families, including about 20 children ranging in age from babies to teenagers, had to be evacuated as torrents of seawater flowed through their homes. ‘It was a shocking sight,’ said Yam Island Community Council chairperson Mr Walter Mackie, quoted in the Torres News, ‘They’ve lost their belongings, everything. The waves crashed into the side of the dwellings and the spray was higher than the roofs.’ On Boigu and Saibai islands, the high tide breached the seawall in a number of places, flooding homes and other buildings and inundating part of the airstrip. The Warraber seawall was also breached. The Saibai Community Council chairperson, Mr Jensen Warusam, said: ‘It’s sad. It made people scared. It’s all about the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer and they are beyond our control. Global warming is an ongoing problem.’

These are not isolated events. They are increasingly occurring every year during the wet season and, according to the residents of these communities, are occurring with increasing severity. Torres Strait Islanders understandably want an explanation for what is happening. Like his counterpart on Saibai, the Yorke Island chairperson, Mr Donald Mosby, is in no doubt that global warming is to blame. ‘You don’t have to be a scientist,’ he said, ‘not when you see metres of beach disappearing every week.’

Yet the basic data required to establish a sea level baseline in the Torres Strait is simply not available because there are no tide gauges in the area, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Nor is the Australian Greenhouse Office, which coordinates the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project, conducting any research in the Torres Strait. The baseline monitoring project, as its name implies, is designed to monitor sea levels around the coastline but is not doing any work in a region that must be one of the most susceptible in the nation to sea level rises caused by global warming.

The Torres Strait and the northern Cape York Peninsula area are highly vulnerable places. The region is at the juncture of the Pacific and Indian oceans, with strong currents and extreme variations in sea levels. It experiences strong winds for much of the year and is cyclone prone. Heavy cyclonic or wet-season rain compounds the flooding caused by high tides or storm surge. It beggars belief that no long-term scientific measures are being undertaken by the federal government which are specific to Torres Strait. But this sad fact just reflects the Howard government’s general approach to global warming—a vain hope that it will go away. The need for leadership from the federal government is now urgent. The available data on sea levels is either grossly inadequate or grossly inaccurate. This means that a recent expert survey of risk management in the Torres Strait was unable to assess the flooding and storm surge risk for three islands: Darnley, Mer and Yorke islands. The survey report states:

A number of low-lying communities could face widespread destruction in the event of a storm surge over 1.5 metres. It is considered that there is little that can be done to mitigate widespread damage from a storm surge within these low-lying communities.

The report continues:

It should be noted that the likelihood of a storm surge event in the Torres Strait is hard to define based on published scientific data. Furthermore ... the analysis of storm surge and flooding in this study has been complicated by a number of inconsistencies in published tide data and the available land survey.

The report says:

Given the potential consequences of a storm surge event, the completion of a scientific storm surge study for the Torres Strait is considered to be a very high priority.

The absence of baseline data for the Torres Strait is a scandal, and a breach of the federal government’s duty of care to 8,000 of its citizens. Even worse, the survey states:

It should be noted that the level of risk associated with storm surge inundation may increase over time as a result of global sea level rise.

So, here we are with utterly useless data on the baseline and therefore no possibility of making accurate predictions of the effects of global warming.

We do have in our possession some global warming information, and it is no comfort whatsoever. Broadly, according to the UN based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global mean sea level rise as a result of global warming will be between nine centimetres and just under one metre by 2100. The range of the rise will vary between 0.13 metres—that is, 13 centimetres—and 0.94 metres. That is a disaster for the Torres Strait. It means that many of the island and coastal communities will be uninhabitable when the sea level rise is coupled with other factors such as predicted temperature and rainfall increases and an increase in the severity and incidence of cyclones.

The survey has tabulated the extreme and high risks for the islands—except for the three whose data was totally inadequate—in relation to storm surge and flooding. The tables, which do not incorporate any aspect of sea level rise or climate change, paint a fairly desperate picture. For example, every island is at such high risk that storm surge and flood hazard maps do not accurately depict the hazard.

There is a high risk on every island except four that in a storm surge it would not be possible to shelter the community or evacuate the community if required. On every island except six there is a high risk that homes might be damaged or destroyed in a storm surge. In six of the communities—Darnley, Yam, Mabuiag, Yorke, Saibai and the coastal community of Seisia—there is a high risk that residents might be killed or injured during a flood event. If the federal government needed reasons to show some leadership and some concern for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants of the Torres Strait and the northern peninsula area, then here they are.

There are a number of mapping and research programs and some remedial works being undertaken in the region, mostly jointly with Queensland. But there is nothing by way of a coherent strategy to deal with the immediate problem, much less the potentially dire consequences of climate change. That is what is required—and now.

As a start, the federal government must sign up to the Kyoto protocol. Secondly, the federal government must begin an intensive land and sea survey in the Torres Strait based on independent science. Thirdly, the federal government must actively investigate every avenue to avoid the necessity of evacuating thousands of people from their island homes, their traditional homeland. Fourthly, the federal government must consult with and include the people of the Torres Strait and the northern peninsula area in their deliberations. These are four simple, straightforward things that the federal government must do for the 8,000 residents of the Torres Strait. The need is urgent, because the writing is on the wall for the Torres Strait. Every scientist, every community group and most Australians can read that message, but I am afraid our Prime Minister refuses to do so.

When the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is released, we can expect some very bleak news for Australia, and for the Torres Strait in particular. The draft report states that the king tides in 2005 and this year in the Torres Strait highlight the need to revisit short-term coastal protection and long-term relocation plans for up to 2,000 Australians living on the central coral cays and the north-west mud islands. This is just another way of saying that, if the federal government does not finally accept some responsibility now, these islands will very rapidly become uninhabitable. The draft report reveals that the displacement of Torres Strait Islanders to mainland Australia is likely to occur between now and 2050. There are no ifs, no buts. Displacement is now likely, and not just possible, and it is likely very soon.

If the federal government does not act now, climate change is likely to lead to six key impacts, and the impacts are likely to reach critical level once global warming exceeds one to two degrees on a 1990 baseline. Amongst those impacts for coastal communities is the climatic scenario of sea level rises, more intense tropical cyclones and larger storm surges. The draft report states that sea level rise is virtually certain to cause greater coastal inundation, erosion, loss of wetlands and mangroves and saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources. As if we do not have enough problems with fresh water in the Torres Strait now.

Regions exposed to cyclones are likely to experience larger inundation due to higher storm surges. Although cyclones occasionally pass through the Torres Strait, the strait itself is not described as cyclone prone. But the strong winds and the high seas associated with cyclones across Cape York cause the havoc, including the flooding and the storm surges, that I have already mentioned this evening. The failure of the federal government and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage to deal with the likely impacts on the Torres Strait of more intense cyclones, higher sea levels and heavier rainfall constitutes an inexcusable dereliction of duty. When the fourth assessment report is released, it will add to a mountain of evidence, including this week’s CSIRO report Climate change in the Asia-Pacific region, that a substantive, coherent federal strategy for dealing with climate change is needed now, and nowhere more urgently in Australia than in the Torres Strait.