Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

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

Question put and passed.

Senator Di Natale quite rightly raised the issue of the fifth Pacific Islands Development Forum leaders' summit, held this week. He referenced the fact that our Pacific neighbours have now joined over 900 jurisdictions worldwide to declare a climate emergency and have asked relevant parties to the Kyoto protocol to refrain from using carryover credits as abatements for emission reduction targets. As Senator Di Natale made clear in his question, this was squarely aimed at Australia, as there is no other country that intends to rely on these credits in order to keep polluting its atmosphere.

What we got from the government was, quite frankly, a pathetic response to Senator Di Natale's question. The government has confirmed today that it does intend to rely on an accounting trick to try to con the world, and con Pacific island nations in particular, that it's taking the requisite strong action on the breakdown of our global climate. Let me assure the government that the Earth's atmosphere and our climate cares not one jot for accounting tricks. What it cares about is the total amount of carbon-equivalent gases that we emit into it.

We are in a climate emergency. Our climate is breaking down around us. Our house is on fire. And, when we are in a war situation, we're quite quick to establish war cabinets to try and take the politics out of our response to those crises. Well, where's our war cabinet today when we are facing an existential threat to, at the very least, the survival of our civilisation and potentially the survival of humans and a species? Seriously, even birds know not to foul their own nests, but here we are fouling our own nest.

I say to government members and also to the Labor Party—who still is in love with the coal industry, as we've seen by the establishment this week of a group, the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Coal Exports, with members from both major parties involved in the establishment of that group—if you can't feel the social contract fracturing, if you can't feel the very foundations of law and order, the rule of law and trust in our most precious institutions, crumbling, you are simply not paying attention to what is going on. And those foundations are crumbling for many reasons. The trust deficit is spiking for many reasons. But primary among them is our collective failure as policymakers and lawmakers to take strong enough action in response to the breakdown of our climate and the extinction crisis that we are facing.

I say something to young people: I'm so very, very sorry for our failings. My generation is collectively stealing your future by refusing to take anything like the strong concerted action that we need to address the climate emergency. And, of course, one of the real tragedies of that situation is that the people in here making these decisions, or in fact not making the requisite decisions, will not be around to face the full consequences of our failures; or, if we are around, we'll be wealthy enough to escape the worst of those consequences. It's poor people, it's our children and our grandchildren, and Pacific island nations that will disappear forever under sea-level rise that will pay the price for our criminal negligence.

Question agreed to.