Senate debates

Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers

Great Barrier Reef

3:32 pm

Photo of Larissa WatersLarissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to the Great Barrier Reef.

I assume that people saw the reports this week from one of our eminent science bodies in Far North Queensland, saying that, sadly, 67 per cent of the northern reef corals have died. Coral bleaching is different from coral death, as I hope people realise. Corals can bleach and then, thankfully, they can recover. If they bleach so badly they die, then that recovery process takes an awful lot longer—you have to start from scratch. What we have seen is that the northern reef has lost two-thirds of its corals. They have permanently died after this year's worst ever coral bleaching event on the reef.

I asked the Attorney when the government would accept those facts, rather than, as they did yesterday, stand with One Nation to support discussion for an hour in this chamber—with all of the costs that go along with that and all of the precious time—and argue about whether this bleaching is even real and whether global warming is even real. Of course, true to form, I got no meaningful response from the Attorney—one learns to accept that it is called 'question time' and not 'answer time' for a reason.

I next raised that this morning's papers have a report regarding the government's response to the World Heritage Committee, which is due tomorrow. The reports indicate that a draft has been leaked, and that the government's response to the northern Great Barrier Reef bleaching event has no new money and no new actions. It seems like a pretty tepid response to me, and I asked the Attorney, 'Who on earth are you consulting when you are writing these documents? Have you actually spoken with any of the scientists, who would beg you to do more on global warming and on a whole raft of matters to try to safeguard corals from further bleaching?' Again, unfortunately, Senator Brandis referred simply to previous bleaching and completely ignored that my question referred to this year's bleaching and this year's coral deaths, and he talked about the small amount of money that the government has committed under the reef plan.

As people who are watching this closely know, the reef plan is toothless. It is not statutory; it is just a plan. It does not have any enforceability and it is underfunded. One of the biggest criticisms that has been made of the reef plan by coral reef scientists is that not only is it $8 billion short on funding its water quality objectives—those objectives will not be met, because the money is not there—but it ignores global warming. That means we have two plans that are meant to deal with the health of the reef that ignore global warming. Hello, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and just about every other scientists on the planet acknowledges that global warming is the biggest threat to the reef. They also acknowledge that it is human induced, but that message does not seem to have reached everyone in this chamber. And yet, the government has these plans which do not deal with the key problem, and then underfunds the plans to boot.

The problem with this is that the World Heritage Committee can still put our reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger. If this government intends to give them a substandard response to the worst mass coral bleaching event in the reef's long, ancient history, then I am worried that we will be back there fighting that battle again. We know that the reef is in danger from global warming, terrible water quality, the crown of thorns and storms, but, if it is put on the List of World Heritage in Danger, I am really worried about what that will do to our tourism industry. I think the government should be doing everything it can to avoid going on that list of shame—funding activities to protect the reef and to protect those 70,000 jobs, and doing something meaningful on climate change.

Instead, they have their heads in the sand. They are now cosying up to One Nation, who do not even think climate change is real, let alone human induced, and our reef is left to suffer. When 22 per cent of the reef's coral has just died and this government is still asleep at the wheel, you have to ask yourself, 'What more needs to happen before the message gets through to these people? Do they really not care about this amazing organism or the jobs of the 70,000 people who rely on it?' They claim to care about the jobs. Occasionally they bail out companies that fall over. Where is the bailout package for the reef? Where is the acknowledgement of the clear science that says the reef is in peril and that we have to do something to avert that. Many scientists think it is already too late, and we know that if we limit global warming to two degrees we will still lose 100 per cent of global reefs. If we manage to stick to 1½ degrees, the scientists tell us we will still lose 90 per cent of coral reefs. This is life or death for our coral reefs, and this government is too busy cosying up to One Nation to give a damn and do anything about it.

Question agreed to.