Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. We must as a matter of utmost emergency suspend standing orders and deal with this motion because the earth and this country are indeed in the middle of a climate emergency, and the sooner we understand and acknowledge that and declare a climate emergency, the sooner we can all get off our collective backsides and do something about it. It's not that hard to declare a climate emergency. The New Zealand parliament is expected to today declare a climate emergency. Already England, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Japan and countless other jurisdictions around the world have declared a climate emergency.

How much more evidence do we need that we have a climate emergency? How can we so quickly forget the shocking bushfires of last summer? How can we ignore the fact that the Bureau of Meteorology has declared the November just finished to be the hottest November on record? How can we ignore what might be ahead of us in this summer—whether it be more bushfires or shocking storms or hurricanes or who knows what else? It is undeniable that we have a climate emergency. We have to listen to the experts. For example, the Australian Medical Association has warned that at 3.4 to 4.4 degrees of warming the consequences of climate change will be serious and both direct and indirect. Observe the projected health impacts, globally and in Australia. The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements warned that 'climate driven natural hazards are expected to become more frequent and intense'. Ninety atmospheric physicists, meteorologists and climate scientists from 40 countries have advised the world that this is the critical decade and that global emissions must be halved by 2030, or we risk spiralling into a chain reaction of natural disasters and feedback loops that will be beyond humanity's ability to control. We have to listen to the Bureau of Meteorology when they say 3.4 to 4.4 degrees of warming by the year 2100. That's only 80 years away. That will be in the lifetime of the children of members of this parliament and within the lifetime of people in primary school today. This is a real emergency. It's not something in the distant past; it's real and it's imminent.

After we've declared the climate emergency, we then need to get serious about dealing with it. This country has the know-how and resources to deal with it. We have an abundance of renewable energy resources. We have to use them. We have to put this country on a credible pathway to zero net carbon emissions and 100 per cent reliance on renewable energy—not by 2050, but by 2030. Yes, that's bold and ambitious. Some people would say it's impossible. But let's go for it. Let's set an example for the rest of the world. Let's show what one of the richest, brightest and most fortunate countries in the world can achieve when we put our minds to it and our shoulders to the wheel. We've got an abundance of energy: solar, wind, geothermal, wave, clean hydrogen, hydro, pumped hydro, emerging technologies and things we haven't even discovered yet because we haven't tried to discover them.

There is an urgent need to suspend standing orders to deal with this motion and for this parliament to debate and then declare a climate emergency. As I said in my opening remarks, we can then get off our collective backsides and do something about it. We can help to clean up this environment and we can help to address climate change, and we can be a global leader in this space. While we're at it, we can also be a leader in our region and help the countries in our region with increased foreign aid for them to deal with climate change and to prepare for the consequences of climate change. We've got to think about them as well, the people who live in the lowlands of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Pacific island microstates. They are all going to have a terrible time, within their lifetimes, because of the consequences of climate change. We have to be honest about climate change and stop kidding ourselves that, just because we think we only contribute 1.5 per cent of global emissions, it's not that big a deal for us. What about all our exported emissions—the captive emissions in our coal and our gas that we send to other countries—which, when they're all added up show that we're actually contributing some five per cent to global emissions? We are a major polluter. We have a moral obligation and an economic obligation to do something about it

I'm honoured to second the motion moved by the member for Melbourne. The government didn't give leave for this to be debated, but I urge them to get behind it now. Why not vote in support of this motion? Why not, today, declare a climate emergency? That's what a responsible government would do. That's what a government that is in tune with the will of the community would do. That's what we need. (Time expired)

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