Senate debates

Wednesday, 6 December 2023

Statements by Senators

South Australia: Climate Change

1:56 pm

Photo of Alex AnticAlex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

This week, South Australia's Chief Public Health Officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, proclaimed that SA was in a state of 'permacrisis'. How frightening! Coincidentally, I recently suggested some names myself that people could use to 'scare up' the so-called 'climate crisis', including things like 'global climate inferno' and 'mega universe heat death', all of which are much scarier, I might say, than 'permacrisis'. But hats off to SA Health for trying.

What does the South Australian temperature data really show us? In fact, it shows us that it's flatlining. There is no predictable increase.

Not withstanding this, the professor has called climate change, 'the most significant global threat to human health,' and said that climate change is likely to lead to an exacerbation in heart, lung and kidney disease. Really! Professor Spurrier then went on to say, 'We need to respond to this threat today, not tomorrow or in the distant future.'

Now, I've been saying for a while that you can look forward to a future of climate lockdowns, and this doesn't give me any cause to veer away from that statement. Yet, despite this supposed emergency, Labor still don't seem to have any plans to overturn the moratorium on nuclear energy and develop a nuclear energy industry, which would create cheaper energy and reduce carbon emissions. If there is a climate emergency, why has that been taken off the table? You'd think that using every resource at our disposal would be in order, yet only the renewable investors seem to benefit from the response to this 'imminent global catastrophe'.

Thankfully, though, more Australians are starting to wake up to this narrative. The narrative itself is no longer sustainable, because for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and the harder they try to impose this narrative on us, the harder people are pushing back. Just ask the Dutch farmers.