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

Last week at the invite of marine scientists, I visited UQ's Heron Island Research Station at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef to see firsthand the impact of last year's mass coral bleaching. In 2024 Heron Island experienced a major coral bleaching event that bleached 90 per cent of the coral. Over 40 per cent of that coral died. The scientists from Heron Island took us to see some of the sites impacted by that bleaching event, including some parts that have started to recover but also areas where the coral had died and collapsed, leaving only rubble beds. This is the sixth mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in just nine years, following weeks of marine heatwaves caused by climate induced heat stress.

Warming ocean temperatures are the result of successive governments' failure to cut fossil fuel emissions. Climate driven marine heatwaves aren't the only issue the reef is facing; ocean acidification, water quality from agricultural run-off, overfishing and, still, the crown-of-thorns starfish are all threatening our precious Great Barrier Reef. They threaten the 60,000 jobs the reef supports as well as the countless species of sea life it's home to.

While it was hopeful to see some areas of recovery and the resilience of some of the coral species, we know that the more stress the reef is placed under the harder it is for the coral species to recover. We need to stop the oceans warming. That means no new coal and gas in a climate crisis.

Thank you to Dr Stuart Kininmonth, Dr Caitlin Alinya Lawson, Dr Selina Ward and Elliot Peters for being our guides on Heron, and to everyone doing the hard work on the front lines to protect our precious reef. We will keep up the fight here in parliament for climate and environment laws that ensure they are protected for generations to come.