Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There is nothing like climate change to get the coalition going. The member for Lyne, led by the most progressive forces embodied in the member for Menzies, whom I have always seen as being strong on this issue as well as so many other reforms before the parliament, asks in particular about other programs which are available for deployment by local communities. Out of the Caring for our Coasts initiative of some $25 million, national assessments of the vulnerability of Australia’s coastal zone to climate change impacts is to be completed by late 2009. As part of this assessment the government in August launched a National Coastal Landform and Stability Mapping Tool. The purpose of that is to benefit local planners and decision makers as they make coastal planning decisions into the future. That is to deal with prospective challenges. A legitimate question being put by local governments across the country is what information base they are to depend on in the future in making local planning decisions. This would represent one such possible tool, and that is what is available.

Furthermore, I draw the honourable member’s attention to the fact—and I am sure that he is aware of this already but other members of the House may not be—that the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, the Environment and the Arts, chaired I believe by the member for Throsby, is currently engaged in an inquiry into climate change related environmental impacts on coastal communities. Submissions were received up until 30 May and the last of public hearings was held on 27 August. It will be important to see what conclusions that committee reaches in its deliberations on this important question as well. I am also advised that one of the honourable member’s constituents, Mr Keys, made a presentation to that inquiry in March. He is a resident of one of the communities that he referred to at Old Bar. This is a very practical and personal concern. My understanding is that Mr Keys has already lost residences to coastal inundation on that part of the New South Wales coast.

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