Senate debates

Wednesday, 3 April 2019

Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers

Climate Change

3:28 pm

Photo of Nick McKimNick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today relating to climate change.

Well, another budget and another year of the coalition selling out our future: billions of dollars in subsidies to help burn fossil fuels; money to help unlock new gas; and a bill to be rammed through later on this evening—with Labor's help, I might add—to enable taxpayer money to push more fossil fuel projects overseas. In fact, this budget contains more money to reopen the Christmas Island detention centre—so the Prime Minister could hold the most expensive press conference in our country's history—than it does new money to respond to the emergency of climate change. Our temperature records are tumbling. We just had the hottest three months ever recorded, smashing the previous record by a degree. We are running at over two degrees Celsius above the long-term trend. In recent times, apocalyptic scenes have dominated our news. In my state of Tasmania, communities have been threatened, and our precious, unique wilderness World Heritage area has been devastated by fires made more likely and more dangerous by the breakdown of our climate. Vast areas of Queensland have flooded— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.