Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to ask some questions of the minister. My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Why are truth and science now critically endangered under this government? We are now in the third term of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, but all Australians and their natural environment have no cause for celebration. The Great Barrier Reef has been downgraded from 'poor' to 'very poor', the Murray-Darling Basin is in crisis, the nation's faunal extinction crisis is now one of the worst on the planet, Australia's emissions are continuing to escalate as the Morrison government continues its dangerous spiral of climate and science denial, we're seeing ministerial scandals and incompetence, which are destroying confidence in the management of the environment, and as a consequence our greatest environmental challenges now grow much worse.

Funding for the environment department has reportedly been slashed since 2013, in line with its capacity to manage environmental issues. In a backroom deal, $444 million of public funds for reef protection was handed, without a tender, to a small, ill-equipped foundation. Just yesterday we saw a senior minister in the government, the minister responsible for water, drought and natural disasters, say that he didn't know if man-made climate change was real.

I would like to recap on the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's greatest hits on the environment. The Great Barrier Reef—No. 1: reef health, as I said, has been downgraded from 'poor' to 'very poor'. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority recently downgraded the reef's condition and has become more desperate for action, making an unprecedented call for the strongest and fastest possible action to reduce climate emissions.

No. 2: coral bleaching is worse and predictions are for more intense and frequent bleaching events, twice per decade by 2035 and annually by about 2044.

No. 3: the coalition has a reef envoy, but he is acting more like a reef decoy. It is the member for Leichhardt. He is refusing to accept the truth that climate change is a key threat to the reef. In recent reports he's even been insisting that coral bleaching has been happening for millennia, contrary to scientific evidence, including in the minister's own department. The question is: how could you be an envoy for the reef when you don't understand its greatest threats?

No. 4: the coalition handed $444 million of public money in a back room deal to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. The Auditor-General found the government had failed to comply fully with rules designed to ensure transparency and value for money on the matter.

No. 5: we've had reports that climate-science-denying government MP, the member for Dawson, is attempting to dictate which science should be ignored and which science should be accepted in order to judge the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

No. 6: on threatened species in extinction, Australia is considered to have one of the worst extinction rates in the world, with the highest rates of vertebrate mammal extinction in the world.

No. 7: Australia's faunal extinction crisis has escalated under the Morrison government while his government apparently has no plan to deal with it.

No. 8: critically endangered species have, it seems, been poisoned on land which has a connection to one of the ministers in this current government.

No 7: the now Treasurer, then the environment minister in office, attempted a ministerial bypass of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee in an attempt to delist a critically endangered species without publishing reason, contrary to science and in support of a minister's personal interest in a property on which the particular grassland was growing.

No 10: the Prime Minister just made up a piece of legislation that was supposed to be tackling the extinction crisis after the release of a UN report. There was no such legislation.

I'll even go to No. 11: the government has reportedly cut funding for the environment department by almost 40 per cent since 2013, leaving it incapable of doing what it should be able to do without the resources to do what it should be able to do: protect the environment appropriately, including species that are listed as critically endangered.

I'll also take the opportunity to note that Australia's environment and climate face twin political threats: on the Right from an anti-science, backward-looking and dishonest government and on the far Left from the Greens political party, who set climate action back more than a decade when they joined with the conservatives in 2009 to vote down the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The Greens political party put their own political interests before serious action on climate and the environment, just like at the last election when their attacks on Labor helped to elect another anti-science, climate-change-denialist coalition government.

In conclusion, this government is asleep at the wheel of Australia's greatest threats and environmental challenges. Without action, Australians will end up paying the price, so I ask again: why is it that truth and science are critically endangered under this government, Minister Ley?

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