Mal Washer (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Throsby. This report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts—it was the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—entitled Managing our coastal zone in a changing climate: the time to act is now is an epic piece of work. I am getting advice from the chair of the committee, as you should.

I want to acknowledge some of the people in here who have participated. If you do not mind, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I will mention their names: I can see the member for Petrie, Yvette D’Ath; Mark Dreyfus, who is to be an honourable I hope one day soon, from Isaacs; Julia Irwin, the member for Fowler; my good friend the honourable John Murphy from Lowe; and you, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. They were all part of this committee. I want to thank them for the work they put into this and the expert advice. I want to particularly mention the two good-looking ladies over there: Julia Morris and Kate Sullivan. Kate was with us all of the time. Dr Kate Sullivan, thank you very much for what you did to make this go.

I do not want to talk too much about this because everyone should come along to the committee later to hear what a great piece of work this is. I am not going to take away too much of the sunshine, but I do want to say that 80 per cent of our population live in the coastal zone. The population is projected to reach 35 million—and it is probably underestimated—by 2047. I think that is worrisome, for all of the reasons we have got here, if we are all going to live in that same zone.

Rising sea levels are real. Professor Kurt Lambeck, who is one of the world’s experts, certainly looked at it. There is no doubt that the sea level gone up 1.5 metres in the last 100 years. That was the overall global average, so it was bigger in some areas. In the first 50 years the global average rise was one millimetre. In the 40 years after that, the global average rise was two millimetres. In the last decade the global average rise has been over three millimetres, so some areas are worse than that.

The time to act is now. If you go around our coast and have a look, which we did, in reality there is little of our coast left. It has all got groynes or sandbags, or they are pumping sand. It is a disaster. It is washed away, and that is the reality. So climate change is absolutely real and a vital issue. I do not think the chair, the member for Throsby, mentioned it, but 2012 is going to be the Year of the Coast, so let us make that a great year. Jennie, I think that is going to be a good year, right? It is really important.

So now all we have to do is get a national standard in place to work out our benchmarks—what we predict for the future. Because the sea level has gone up so much in the past and it is rapidly escalating, we really need to put that in place. I guess 0.8 metres is probably as good as it gets, but, anyway, you have to be convinced by the science.

The committee has previously done the Sustainability for survival: creating a climate for change report in 2007 and the Sustainable cities report in 2005. Sadly, for this parliament, neither of those reports has been acknowledged, accepted or its recommendations responded to by either the previous or the current government. That, I think, is very sad. We need all levels of government to be involved.

This inquiry saw great participation from the most important people out there, our constituents. That is what makes the committee system so valuable. The committee had over 100 written submissions and 180 exhibits, heard from 170 witnesses, held 28 public hearings around the country and, in its report, made 47 recommendations. That is true democracy, but sadly this parliament has forgotten what that is about.

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