Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Newcastle for moving this important motion, which highlights perfectly this government's ineptitude and lack of action when it comes to being serious about climate change and the effects of climate change. We all know that rising sea levels are going to result, and are resulting, in coastal erosion, which is having a dramatic economic and social impact on many communities throughout Australia.

The Australian coastline is of immense economic, social and environmental importance to our nation. We have more than 59,000 kilometres of coastline, with around 85 per cent of the population living in coastal regions. Nearly 40,000 buildings and hundreds of coastal communities are located within 100 metres of what are called 'soft' shorelines, which are at risk from accelerated erosion. Coastal erosion presents a social, environmental and economic threat to coastal communities. The increasing concentration of wealth and population in coastal areas further exposes those communities and insurers to devastating losses. Many of those insurers are covering, at a loss, some parts of Australia that are considered disaster prone, and some communities are finding that they may soon be uninsurable. I've recently travelled up to the north of Australia, particularly to northern Queensland, where communities in Townsville, Cairns and Mackay are having terrible trouble getting coverage through insurance for their homes and their small businesses.

We know that human induced climate change will further accelerate erosion, putting many communities in grave danger; projected increases in sea levels have the potential to increase the risks from storm surges and high tides. While some general insurers offer partial coverage for erosion and seawater inundation due to storm surge, no insurers offer products that cover loss or damage due to gradual sea-level rise. A number of communities are already starting to sustain serious damage from coastal erosion, with a loss of dunes and inundation.

In my electorate of Kingsford Smith we've had a recent glimpse of the damage that can be done by storm surges and coastal erosion. In 2016—it was actually during the election campaign—we had an east coast low that battered the coastline of Kingsford Smith and basically wiped out one of the walls of the Coogee surf club. The storm surge and the seas were so big that they came up and knocked over the wall to the gymnasium of Coogee surf club and did immense damage, not only to the surf club but also to the beach. That has an effect on the insurance policies of the council and the surf club in the future, and that's the cost of climate change. That's what those on the opposite side don't understand—that people are bearing the cost of climate change through increased severe storm events and erosion as we speak. Coogee is one of the oldest surf clubs in Australia, but the severity of the east coast low that struck it hadn't been seen in its 110-year history.

We've already seen the all-too-real impacts on our Pacific neighbours. Pacific nations are having to move communities because of the effects of climate change, which is inundating infrastructure. Wells and crops are becoming salinised and therefore unproductive. These conditions, in areas such as the Solomon Islands, provide an insight into the future impacts of accelerated sea-level rise.

Yet, although their leaders change, there remains no national leadership from this government on the issue of climate change and coastal erosion. All climate adaptation activities have been defunded under the Liberals. They didn't bother including climate change adaptation in their 2017 review of climate change policies, despite the fact that a 2013 Productivity Commission report, released when Labor was in government, highlighted the clear need for adaptation measures to reduce the risks associated with unavoidable climate change. More needs to be done to repair our coastlines, tackle coastal erosion and prepare our beaches for the impact of climate change.

Australia is still without a national framework for building climate resilience, because the battle about whether or not climate change is real and its effects on Australia is still going on within the Liberal Party. After seven years they still doesn't have a national climate change policy and they still don't have a national energy policy. It is Australian communities that are bearing the full impact of that. This government needs to wake up and realise that Australian coastal communities are suffering because of its inaction, and develop a national coastal erosion policy.

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