Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Recently it was my pleasure to receive the Fenner Community Climate Petition from a delegation from Daramalan College, in my electorate. I thank teacher Andrew Digan and students Sarah Thomson and Emma Slaven for compiling this important petition. Twenty thousand people around Australia have signed petitions, coordinated by Micah Challenge, to urge Australia's leaders to do more to tackle climate change.

Climate change is a serious challenge for Australia. In January this year, NASA and NOAA announced that for the third successive time the planet had experienced the hottest year on record. Global warming can be seen in air temperatures, water temperatures, atmospheric temperatures, Arctic sea ice, snow cover and the 205 temperature records that were broken in Australia's most recent 'angry summer'. It has been estimated that the cost of unchecked climate change could be more than $8 billion a year to Australia.

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has argued that global warming has led to conflict in Sudan, Somalia, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. It has been referred to as 'the mother of all risks to national security'. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has warned climate change will threaten financial resilience and longer term prosperity. Australia has the highest emissions per person in the advanced world. We must do more, and I commend those who have brought together this important petition in my electorate, which I now table.

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