Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Natural Disaster and Emergency Management (Senator McKenzie) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today relating to climate change.

Right now there are people in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales whose lives have been turned upside-down—people who have lost their homes. Many people have experienced what can only be described as a severe trauma in being exposed to unprecedented wildfires that are ravaging parts of those states. Indeed, we know that these bushfires have led not only to the loss of property; livestock has been lost, and we know that more of our precious biodiversity is being pushed closer to the edge of extinction. In the midst of that, we see the brave and heroic actions of emergency service workers who are doing everything they can to militate against the loss of life and property.

One would think that, given such a horrendous situation, this government would be doing everything it could to ensure that we prevent further tragedies like this from happening in the future. Yet, despite the fact that we know the effects of climate change not just from the science but from the emergency service workers themselves who have been imploring this government to act on climate change, when pressed on this, this morning on Radio National, the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management was asked a very direct question about whether he believed that human-induced climate change was contributing to these fires—his response: 'It's irrelevant.' It's irrelevant, in the view of the minister charged with protecting the lives of people, as to whether we're doing something that may indeed be contributing to these fires. It's irrelevant, according to the minister, that we could be burning fossil fuels in this country, contributing to worsening wildfires and extreme weather, putting the lives of emergency services personnel and ordinary Australians at risk.

Of course his comments are in direct contradiction of emergency service workers themselves. We saw 23 emergency service chiefs from all states and territories come together and make it very clear that they expect governments to act on climate change or their jobs will be harder and they themselves will be at greater risk. The science is clear. Emergency services personnel are making their voices heard. We had the public health community, the AMA and doctors, saying that it's time we acknowledge a climate emergency, and yet here we have a government committed to increasing the use of fossil fuels when we know that coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change.

Australia's pollution has never been higher than it is right now. We are pumping more heat into and trapping more gas in the atmosphere and our oceans than at any other time in human history, and the government's plan is to increase our coal and gas exports. Gas exports are the biggest driver of this increase in pollution in our atmosphere and have wiped out all of the gains that we've seen as a result of the transition to renewable energy.

Australia is now not just the biggest exporter of coal but also the biggest exporter of LNG, and both parties are on a unity ticket here. Despite the fact that the International Energy Agency have said that the world can't have one single new fossil-fuel project or we blow our carbon budget, what's been the response of the government? Full steam ahead with the Adani coalmine. Last week, Joel Fitzgibbon was spruiking the Narrabri coal seam gas project, which farmers are dead opposed to because they know what it means for them and for their local communities. We've got Senator Canavan travelling the world and trying to shore up declining markets for thermal coal. We know why they're so wedded to the coal, oil and gas industry. It probably has something to do with those millions of dollars in donations flowing straight out of the profits from the coal, oil and gas industry and straight into the bank accounts of the Liberal-National and Labor parties. What we have in Australian politics right now is a duopoly doing the bidding of an industry that is fuelling dangerous climate change and putting at risk right now the lives of ordinary Australians who are being impacted by rising pollution and increasing bushfires.

The message is clear: we need to transition our economy away from coal, oil and gas, and we have to start addressing the causes of climate change if we're going to reduce the threats that ordinary Australians face each and every day.

Question agreed to.