Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The seas of my state have been taken over by an algal bloom on an unprecedented scale. It's a disaster of national significance that demands a national response. While our scientists are researching the cause, they warn that it is very likely that blooms of this severity will increase if we continue to pollute our seas with nutrients and change the climate by unrestrained polluting.

Bearing witness to this disaster, and as a South Australian, I fail to see how anyone could not accept the necessity of targets to encourage the economic conditions that will reduce emissions. Targets send a clear and unambiguous signal to the markets, the bureaucracy and communities that we are aspiring to transform our economy to one that is on a sustainable footing.

Still, there are some amongst us in the community who challenge the need for the transition, comfortable and self-satisfied in their denials and their wilful blindness to a changing climate that will eventually impact each and every community. Perhaps a more honest conversation is needed by the body politic. It should be acknowledged that ambitious targets have the potential for significant disruption and will be hard on many communities.

As a young lawyer practising in Port Augusta, I witnessed the consequences of economic disruption and the resulting social impacts. Workers lost their employment with the railways and the power station. Families broke down. Children were lost to the criminal justice system.

Rather than debating whether we should have targets, we should be debating how best to bring our people with us and assist them during the transition. We must arrest our declining productivity, to have the national wealth to underpin any transition. We need an economy driven by innovation—something that we have struggled with to date.

We must not neglect to align our environmental ambitions with economic pragmatism and with the competing priorities of the nation. Sir Garfield Barwick—better known as a jurist, less well known as the founder and former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation—held the view that conservation did not just concern the preservation of flora and fauna and the environment that supported them; rather, it also involved planning the rational use of the entire environment to ensure present and future generations live sustainably and have satisfying lives. In his paper titled 'Economic growth and the environment', he argues that we should turn away from growth for its own sake and change our values. He believed that growth-mindedness and its consequences were the golden calf and the false god Baal. If we are to have any success in reaching any target, there must be a change in values, a change in the way we think.

It was only recently that we had, in this very building, an economic roundtable that was held in the shadow of the impending release of the Climate Change Authority report on targets, as well as the climate risk assessment. Potential improvements in productivity were debated at the forum, but nature was not at the heart of the discussions. In my view, we must put nature at the very centre of all our decision-making. How else can we successfully traverse the narrow road to a sustainable economy that supports healthy and happy communities?

Targets should not be viewed as a yoke but rather as an expression of our commitment to reconcile with nature. The debate over targets is, in reality, a debate on the extent of our obligation to the following generations. To be a good steward today is to be a revered ancestor tomorrow. We need our patriots to hear the call to action and stand up and fight for the next generation.