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

I rise tonight to put on record my alarm, anger, frustration and sadness at what is happening in the Great Barrier Reef at the moment. The whole world is hearing about a second back-to-back mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef. This has been portrayed by scientists who have been studying the Great Barrier Reef for over 25 years, including Professor David Booth from UTS, who appeared at a Senate inquiry that I was chairing, as the worst bleaching event that they have seen. This is the fourth mass bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef in the last 20 years. Sadly, it looks like much of the reef will not recover.

I rise tonight to put on record to the Australian people that there are some politicians and members of parliament in this building who do care deeply about the future of the Great Barrier Reef, our environment, the communities and the jobs that rely on the Great Barrier Reef. I rise tonight to let the Australian people know that there are some members of parliament, especially among the Australian Greens, who have been consistent in calling for the action on emissions that we know is so important to the warming waters and the damage that that is doing to these precious ecosystems that support the marine life, including our commercial fisheries in places like Queensland. And I rise tonight to put on record that there is one political party that is above the political opportunism and the political populism that goes with denying climate science and the impact it is having on our lives and on precious places like the Great Barrier Reef.

I also rise tonight to express my consternation at the answers I got from Senator Birmingham in question time today when I asked some very serious questions. I asked the government to update the Senate on the state of this fourth mass bleaching event, which is attracting international news. The news, we know, is already grim. But I expected that the government would have answers. I was deeply shocked that the government has not even analysed the data dating back to last October, nearly six months ago. I also asked a question on why the government is lobbying to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the World Heritage Endangered List, especially given these back-to-back bleaching events. I did not get a straight answer. In fact, I did not get an answer at all. It seems to me that the government have their heads in the sand. They do not want to analyse the data on the bleaching of the reef because it is so embarrassing for them. Every Senate question time so far in the last two parliamentary sittings, they have been actively encouraging so-called clean coal. We are exporting coal and climate change to the rest of the world and it is an embarrassment to this government when the world's largest organism is dying.

I was also gobsmacked today when Senator Birmingham and other members of the coalition parties seemed to think it was funny or somehow a joke when I mentioned the grief expressed by Professor Terry Hughes, one of the more eminent climate scientists who lives and studies the Great Barrier Reef, and the grief expressed by his students, scientists studying the Great Barrier Reef. They seemed to think it was a big joke. Well, it is not a big joke; it is actually very sad and very serious. I have no doubt that this bleaching event is going to have very serious ramifications for Queensland. If we do not do something about it, it is only going to get worse.

I rise here tonight to say that the Greens will continue to take the hardest possible line on keeping fossil fuels in the ground and doing everything we can to reduce global emissions so that we can save our reefs and the communities that depend on them.