Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McKim has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today. It is shown at item 12 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today the Australian Greens propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to immediately release the NCRA Report, so Australians can assess whether the Government's proposed climate response will adequately protect the future of coral reefs, and the communities and economies that depend on them, from coastal flooding, coral bleaching, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse."

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to immediately release the NCRA Report, so Australians can assess whether the Government's proposed climate response will adequately protect the future of coral reefs, and the communities and economies that depend on them, from coastal flooding, coral bleaching, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.

After burying it for nine months, Greens pressure has forced the Labor government to commit to releasing the National climate risk assessment, but they're still refusing to release it before they set the 2035 targets, claiming public interest immunity. I thank the Senate for their support—in fact, just a few minutes ago—in rejecting that claim. I look forward to the government tomorrow, hopefully, complying with the order to produce the report, although, frankly, I won't hold my breath. I would also like to thank the Senate for supporting my motion to establish an inquiry into the government's secrecy in withholding this climate risk assessment report.

This is an opportunity to investigate why the Labor government has withheld this report for so long—nigh on nine months now—as well as recognising the hard work that the report's researchers have done in establishing how truly devastating unmitigated climate change would really be for Australians and nature. This inquiry will investigate what's in that secret report, whether Labor releases it or not. But they should release it immediately so Australians can understand and see for themselves whether the climate response will adequately protect their future and their children's futures.

People deserve to know exactly how global warming is making our country less safe, destroying the environment and supercharging climate disasters that are already costing communities dearly. Australia has done too little for far too long, and now science based targets that keep warming below two degrees require the monumental effort of reaching net zero in the next ten years, not by 2050—and not by never, as the coalition proposes. Labor has to announce Australia's 2035 target this September, and people need to see the true impacts of the climate crisis before the government announce their climate targets.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to say that the coalition supports this urgency motion today. Colleagues, we don't live in a fictional world; we live in the real world, where Australians experience fires, floods and storms. They're not abstract possibilities; they are lived realities. Every farmer from where I come from in the Hunter, every small business out in Bourke, every family that has suffered floods in Lismore and recently on the Mid North Coast where I come from knows that it's not theoretical; it is personal and it is growing. That is why the Commonwealth first set about doing this report, Australia's first national climate risk assessment.

It has taken years of work. Hundreds of scientists, analysts and consultants, with government models, have pored over data for a huge amount of time. They've reviewed international models and consulted with communities. Millions of our taxpayer dollars have been invested into what the guiding document should be about the risks of the changing climate. Yet, despite all that effort and cost, despite the promises of transparency, this report is sitting in a drawer. Millions of dollars sitting in a drawer, hidden from the very Australians who paid for it. If the government thinks that hiding in a drawer is somehow making it safer, they are wrong—in fact, it does the opposite. A risk that is hidden is a risk that is ignored. Risks that are ignored quickly become disasters. Let's be clear: this isn't about one party's ideology or another's. This is about whether the people of this country are able to see, in black and white, the assessment of the challenges they face. It's not too much to ask, is it? We've paid the money and done the work. Can we see it? The initial report identified 56 national significant risks across health, defence, food, finance, ecosystems and regional communities. Eleven of those were judged so serious that they warranted the deepest analysis. Those findings should not have been locked away until after the election, and they should not be locked away now.

The government cannot credibly say it takes climate resilience seriously if it spends millions of dollars commissioning work from Australia's best minds and then buries the findings. You don't reduce risk by hiding it; you reduce it by confronting it, planning for it and resourcing the communities to be ready for it. Think of all that wasted effort if this report stays hidden. Farmers are planning their water infrastructure, councils are trying to design flood levies and insurers are recalculating premiums in regional towns for things that may or may not happen because they don't know the government is holding the data. All these people are left guessing because this government doesn't trust Australians with their own data.

Think of that wasted cost. Taxpayers paid for this. Ordinary Australians have every right to see what their money has produced. If we commission the first-ever national climate risk map but don't release it, what message does that send to people who may suffer and who want to know what's going on with our environment? What happens if we spend all this effort on it and say, 'You don't need to know'? That millions can be spent on a report that gathers dust on a minister's shelf is not leadership, is not accountability and is not that word we hear so often from the other side: transparency. They should not use words they don't know the meaning of.

Transparency builds trust. Hiding reports breeds suspicion. If these findings are confronting—and I think they may be—let's confront them together as a nation. If the report shows risks that are 'intense and scary', as some who have seen the draft say they are, then bring it out; let's all see it. That is all the more reason to tell Australians why it is going on and why we must see it. Resilience is not built on comfort; it is built on honesty, preparation and hard choices in the light of day. We cannot keep telling our nation and communities that we are preparing them for the future while refusing to share the very information that should underpin these decisions.

Release the report. Give local government, industry, farmers, health services, environmental sciences and families the data they need. Let them plan, let them adapt and let them have the respect of being trusted with the truth. Anything less is a betrayal of the work already done. The costs to the taxpayer are already borne. For once, let's be transparent. For once, let's not waste the work. Let's put it to use. Release the report so all Australians may have comfort in what they need to do to protect their environment and their own assets.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Greens political party for moving this urgency motion, but, I have to ask, what is a climate change risk report going to tell us that we don't already know? We have the Ningaloo Reef undergoing a mass bleaching event. We have a catastrophic algal bloom in South Australia. We have the eastern seaboard flooding every five minutes. We are in the teeth of this climate emergency. There is absolutely nothing, I promise you, in that report that I don't already know, that you don't already know and that all Australians don't already know.

We may not have been in this situation, such a dire situation, had the Greens political party and the Liberals, in 2009, passed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Hon. Senators:

Honourable senators interjecting—

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That old chestnut—yes, I do remember it; we keep receipts. We would not be having this conversation at all. In fact, what would be happening today is the dead hand of government would be retreating and the free market would take over—the most efficient mechanism. The carbon tax would now be running in our economy and the free market would be cleaning up this mess, and we wouldn't be in this place right now. But that's not the reality, because the Greens, in their wisdom back then, in their search for perfection, ruled out the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

What are we left with? We're left with second-order and third-order policies, and we are doing our level best as a government. We legislated an emissions target—82 per cent renewable energy by 2030. According to the Climate Change Authority, we're on track to meet that. We're within striking distance, but it's not easy. We have headwinds.

In Australia, we have also got—and this is something to be genuinely proud of—the highest uptake of rooftop solar in the world; 4.1 million households have taken up rooftop solar. That is thanks to a Labor government setting a renewable energy target years and years ago. We are reaping the benefits. To all of those people who do not believe in targets: targets matter; they do matter. As a government, we brought in tax breaks for electric vehicle uptake, and what we have seen is a surge in electric vehicle uptake. When we came in, sales were at a moribund two per cent; they are now at 13 per cent. We have 300,000 electric vehicles on the road today, plus a whole bunch of plug-in hybrids. We also brought in efficiency standards for new vehicles, helping Australians gain access to the most fuel-efficient vehicles—also reducing our emissions.

Then we have the home battery scheme, a complete runaway success, which has exceeded all our expectations. A total of 30,000 home batteries have been taken up by Australians since 1 July. That's a thousand batteries per day. Australians get it. They want to reduce their bills. They want to reduce their emissions. We're giving them the opportunity to do so. On top of that, we're also looking at how we help heavy industry and the high emitters in this country decarbonise. We brought in the safeguard mechanism, which the Greens political party also supported. It enabled our largest emitters in the country to get onto the path of net zero by reducing their emissions by five per cent year on year on year. That's not easy for them, but they are now compelled to do so.

We also brought in the Capacity Investment Scheme. What is that? That is basically a government backed scheme to increase large-scale solar and wind generation in this country backed by storage. This has been, again, a huge success. It has been wildly popular to the point where we have increased its ceiling to 40 gigawatts by 2030. We've had interest from industry which has outstripped the tender process. We've also allocated offshore wind zones around the country and committed $27 billion in production credits for industry to help create green metals and green hydrogen in this country. That is about reshaping our industrial base.

That's not it. The next piece is to repair nature. This is why, while this country is in the grip of a nature crisis, it is imperative that this chamber passes our nature-positive environmental reform laws. Otherwise, we do not get to actually fix this emergency properly.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of urgency and to urge the government to immediately release the National Climate Risk Assessment report—not next month, not with the 2035 emissions target, not at some identified point in the future, but now. Australians deserve to know what is in this report now, because they are the ones who will bear the brunt of climate change. Coastal communities are facing inundation, farmers are facing ongoing droughts, and there have been sweltering 50-degree days in our cities. What more evidence does this government need? Farmers, community leaders and climate scientists who contributed to this report all want it released as a priority.

It is the will of the parliament and the will of the Australian people that it be released. Yet a Senate order for the production of documents, a fundamental tool of accountability in this place, was denied under a flimsy claim of public interest immunity—a continuation of this government's shameful legacy of not adhering to one of our most basic democratic principles: transparency. However inconvenient these climate truths might be for Albanese government's media spinners, there is no justification for withholding the report's immediate release.

Just last week, my colleagues and I were on the Great Barrier Reef, listening to scientists from the Heron Island Research Station as we witnessed the heartbreaking reality of mass coral bleaching. Vast stretches of reef that should be alive with colour and biodiversity were, instead, bleached and lifeless. Yet, alongside the devastation, there are pockets of hope. In some areas, corals are regenerating. Nature is showing its resilience, if only we give it all a fighting chance. These reefs are proof that a brighter future is possible if we act now, guided by science and evidence, not by the demands of the coal and gas lobby.

The loss of coral reefs is not just an ecological tragedy; it threatens the communities that depend on them—businesses, traditional owners and thousands of Australians whose livelihoods are tied to healthy oceans. Coral reefs shield our coastlines, sustain rich biodiversity and anchor regional economies. Their decline is a dire warning, but their recovery is an invitation to choose a different path.

Australians deserve to know the truth about the risks we face, and we deserve a response that matches the scale of the challenge—no new coal and gas approvals, a bold 2035 emissions target and decisions grounded in science, not in fossil fuel profits. Enough secrecy; enough delay—the support for an inquiry into the government secrecy around this climate risk report shows just how serious this is, and tomorrow morning the government has the chance to finally comply with the order to produce it. Only then can we act with the urgency required to protect what remains of our precious oceans and our communities.

Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to address the motion moved by Senator McKim. Australians deserve action on climate change. It was the Albanese government that commissioned Australia's first-ever comprehensive national climate risk assessment, and it was our government that released the first pass assessment in March 2024. That report identified 56 nationally significant climate risks and began a conversation about how we continue to prepare our communities, the economy and our environment for the future.

The final stage of this assessment and its accompanying national adaptation plan is well advanced. This work has involved extensive public consultation, with more than 180 submissions from across government, industry, the community and First Nations groups, and it is currently before the cabinet and subject to the appropriate and customary confidential cabinet processes. As part of the assessment, 11 priority risks have been identified, covering the natural environment, food and agriculture, infrastructure, regional communities, health, supply chains and our economy. It is serious work of government, and we are getting on with it. We take the climate crisis seriously because Australians are already living with more frequent and severe weather events. Every fraction of a degree of warming makes these impacts worse. That is why we have legislated ambitious but achievable emissions reduction targets of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2050, and we are on track to meet them.

Contrast that with what's happening in the Liberal and National parties. Just last week, Liberal National Party of Queensland members voted to call on their federal party to abandon its commitment to net zero. Similar motions have passed in the Western Australian and the South Australian Liberal branches. Senior coalition figures like Andrew Hastie and Barnaby Joyce are openly campaigning to scrap net zero altogether. In WA we've seen public feuds between Andrew Hastie and state Liberal leader Basil Zempilas after Hastie's own members in the division of Canning pushed a motion—

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Whiteaker, can I remind you to refer to members of the other chamber by their correct titles.

Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Canning—to ditch net zero. We know, after crushing election defeats, that the coalition have failed to resonate with women, young people and voters in cities and much of metropolitan Australia. But, instead of uniting around modern policies on climate action, the Liberal Party and the National Party are instead fighting amongst themselves.

While the coalition is reviewing its commitment to net zero and the Greens are grandstanding with motions and stunts, Labor is taking real action on climate change: strengthening the safeguard mechanism, working towards net zero, strengthening our environmental laws and, soon, finalising our first national climate risk assessment and adaptation plan to make our country more resilient.

Our commitment to climate change doesn't end there; it extends to our oceans and our reefs. We know climate change is the biggest threat to coral reefs worldwide, including the Great Barrier Reef. That is why Australia is doing more than ever under our government to manage and protect the reef's outstanding universal value. Together with the Queensland government, we are investing over $5 billion through to 2030 improve water quality, control crown-of-thorns starfish, reduce marine debris and protect marine life. We're on track to deliver all of our UNESCO commitments on water quality, sustainable fisheries and climate action.

All of these efforts—emissions reduction, adaptation planning and marine protection—are about safeguarding Australia's future. They're about protecting communities, industries and ecosystems from the climate impacts that we know are being felt. So when this motion calls on the government to demonstrate that its climate response will protect reefs, communities and economies, the answer is clear: we are. Through unprecedented investment and serious policy work by the government and the cabinet, we are acting where others are simply delaying or grandstanding. We are building resilience while those opposite descend into division and while the Greens simply put— (Time expired)

Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of Senator McKim's motion. Western Australians know what's at stake when we talk about climate change and our reefs. Ningaloo Reef is one of the most breathtaking places on Earth, a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to whale sharks, manta rays, turtles and coral gardens that people travel across the globe to see. But Ningaloo, like Scott Reef further north, is under serious threat from rising ocean temperatures, coral bleaching and the impact of restless fossil fuel expansion. These reefs are not only natural wonders; they are the heart of local economies, supporting tourism, fishing and small businesses up and down the Coral Coast.

That's why the government must release this national climate risk assessment report immediately. Western Australians deserve to know whether the government's climate plans will actually protect Ningaloo or whether they are setting us up for more bleaching, more biodiversity loss and more coastal flooding. I've spoken with locals in WA who say they don't want their kids growing up only hearing stories of a reef that once was. They want them to experience its magic, to swim along a whale shark, to see the coral alive and thriving. Keeping this report secret only fuels suspicion. We need transparency, we need honesty and we need action that matches the scale of this risk.

Ningaloo, Scott Reef and our coastlines are too precious to gamble with. If the government claim that they are serious, then release the report. Let Australians see the risks for themselves and let's get on with protecting the places we all love very much.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Diabolical, dire, extremely confronting—these are the words used to describe the National climate risk assessment, a report that the Labor government has kept locked away from the public for over nine months. Labor violated an order of the Senate to keep this crucial climate information from the public. Now under pressure from the Greens, they have been forced to say that they will release it at some point. Why not now? What are they hiding? The report will reveal the full extent of the devastating impacts of the climate crisis and the very real consequences for the families and communities on the front lines of climate disasters, as well as our coral reefs, biodiversity and ecosystems.

The Labor government, by continuing to rubberstamp coal and gas projects, are setting our country and the globe on the path to climate ruin. Just this month we have seen rainfall records smashed across my state of New South Wales. People have been devastated by unprecedented levels of flooding again and again. They deserve to know the full extent of what they have to endure and what they have to adapt to. In Pakistan, the place I grew up, in doomsday scenes, torrential rain, flash flooding and mudslides have resulted in the death of hundreds and the displacement of thousands.

The government's 2035 targets will show whether Labor intends to put climate ahead of the profits of their pals, the coal and gas corporations from whom their donations flow. A target that does not hit net zero by 2035 and does not include a plan to phase out coal and gas and end native forest logging will not keep the people or the planet safe.

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

The climate is breaking down around us. We've got ecosystems collapsing around us. We've now got a Labour government in its second term, after it spent its first term in government approving new coal and gas mines hand over fist and leaving us with environment protection laws that were weaker after one term of Labor than they were after 10 years of Liberal government under people like Scott Morrison. That's where we find ourselves now—hurtling towards climate and environmental calamity, with a government that is not only doing nothing like enough to address those major challenges but in fact turbocharging the very problems we are facing under the twin crises of climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse.

Not only are they weakening environment laws but they approved well over two dozen coal and gas projects in the last term, and some of the biggest climate bombs on the books have been approved in this term of government. They could not wait to get started. The Labor Party could not wait to get started approving new coal and gas mines for their corporate donors, their political donors in the fossil fuel sector. They couldn't wait. Not only are they delivering for their corporate mates in the fossil fuel sector but they are keeping secret from Australians the impacts of climate change that are coming down the line in part because Australia under Labor continues to approve new coal and gas mines, continues to clear-fell and burn native forests and continues to allow land clearing, particularly in Queensland, to proceed at record paces.

I am sick and tired of listening to PR spin lectures from Labor apparatchiks who come in here and try and convince the Australian people that Labor is taking climate change seriously. Labor is not taking climate change seriously. Labor's policies are turbocharging climate change and, in fact, Labor's policies are still publicly subsidising the burning of fossil fuels. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the matter of urgency moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.