Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am ignoring those greenhouse emissions coming from the opposition. I am told that every greenhouse gas molecule we pump into our atmosphere today will take 100 to 200 years to dissipate. The lights we are burning now are producing greenhouse gases that will still be in the atmosphere in 100 to 200 years time. So as the descendants of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop, read this next century they will be dealing with carbon emissions pumped into the air by her Comcar today. So while this bill will put in place a scheme to reduce our carbon emissions, we have to understand that this ship, HMAS Earth, will take a very long time to change direction. Even if we get all hands on deck today and spin the wheel fully it will take at least a century or so for the effects to be felt on all the decks down to the waterline and below.

Once again I urge those who lead the opposition, not just the rabble on the back benches, to consider the significance of the bills on the table today. To be honest, I will not waste my breath talking to the climate change sceptics on that side of the House. My plea is to the intelligent people, those who understand the science—like Dr Mal Washer—and who genuinely want to do something meaningful to address climate change. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

The time has come for the opposition to put aside their childish ways and to man up—I am not sure if I can say that, Minister for the Status of Women—and work together to tackle climate change because it is not five minutes to midnight on the climate change clock; it is one minute to midnight. The clock is ticking and the time to act is right now.

Media outlets this week revealed a British report that suggested it may already be too late for Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef. As coral bleaching rips through the World Heritage reef, some scientists are coming to terms with the fact that the damage may already be beyond repair. Joe Kelly reported in the Australian on Monday that the Zoological Society of London is planning the world’s first coral cryobank. Samples of each species will be preserved in liquid nitrogen to enable them to be used in the future. Has it come to this? The greatest living organism in the world is going the same way as Walt Disney’s head.

Once the reef is gone, I imagine it will be of little comfort to know that the genetic information of corals is retained in a freezer somewhere in London. This natural wonder is the source of some $5 billion in tourist revenue, especially in Queensland, and fishing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that an increase in sea surface temperature between one and three degrees will completely wipe out our coral reefs. Rising acidity levels will turn our tropical paradise into a Petri dish.

I wish to tell you a tale of two little boys—two men, actually—who are both connected with the town of St George in south-west Queensland. The first boy from St George was an accountant and a rural banker and is now a National Party senator. The other boy became a teacher and a lawyer and is now a Labor backbencher on Brisbane’s south side—that is me, obviously. The first boy is an unbeliever and has been beating the drum in the bush, saying climate change is a fantasy. The other is a believer and is passionate about delivering real and workable solutions to climate change. The first boy, the accountant, talks about fear and taxes, while the second, here today, talks about hope and opportunity. It is amazing how this one small country town, which will no doubt suffer the effects of climate change, could produce two such disparate responses to climate change. I find it even more amazing that the National Party has not taken a lead role in the fight against climate change.

The National Party masquerades as a party of the bush, representing mostly rural farming communities, yet they are completely at odds with Australia’s farming community on climate change. They have even attacked the National Farmers Federation—one of the bush’s best spokespeople. Australian farmers well understand the consequences of climate change, better than almost anyone else on the coastline. They have worked the land for years, they have looked after it and they have witnessed climate change right before their eyes, in places like the Mallee and Western Queensland. They have seen drought slowly and heart-wrenchingly grind their livelihood to dust; they have seen storms and cyclones and even fire destroy their crops in a heartbeat; they have seen flood up in the Gulf area. Yet still, sadly, too many people in the National Party refuse to acknowledge that climate change even exists. National Party senators like Ron Boswell, who sits in his inner-city high-rise office in Brisbane—

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