Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Natural disasters across the country are becoming more frequent and more intense. We are feeling them right across Australia. Even as I stand here speaking here now, people living in New South Wales and Victoria are being subjected to intense rainfall and flooding. This is at one degree of warming.

In my home electorate of Brisbane, the city council recently released an updated flood map for the city. This map shows the extent to which Brisbane is susceptible to climate change induced increases in rainfall and flooding. Residents of Brisbane already knew the widespread devastation that resulted from the floods earlier this year, but to have it shown to them on a map of their city was truly confronting. We saw suburbs that had never previously flooded now being inundated. We saw communities that had previously flooded now being even more severely affected. This is at one degree of warming.

Local businesses in Albion are now increasingly anxious whenever rain sets in. It is not just flash flooding and rising creek levels that can impact them but also now dam releases if these are not done early enough before the wet season. Residents in Stafford saw their backyards shrink by as much 10 metres as rushing waters of the Kedron Brook inundated their homes and properties. A once quiet stream turned into a fast-flowing river carrying shipping containers and debris for miles.

Many residents of Brisbane are now no longer able to get insurance on their properties due to the impacts of climate change on their homes and communities. These more frequent disasters cause immense damage to agriculture, our food sources and supply chains, pushing up prices and making a bad situation even worse. This is at one degree of warming.

When it comes to these climate fuelled disasters mitigation must be the way forward. It is not enough to rely on the resilience of the people in this country every single time a natural disaster occurs. Communities should not be expected to quite literally rebuild their streets, suburbs and even towns every few years, or even more frequently. It is the role of government to keep people safe and to mitigate the risks posed by climate change, especially since successive governments over decades have ignored science and advice from global experts about the damage to individuals, communities and the economy that climate change will cause. Supporting mitigation efforts in communities is the very least that we can do.

This bill is simply a rebranding of the Emergency Response Fund. This bill shifts $150 million set aside for disaster recovery to instead sit with the $50 million spent on public works to minimise the impacts of natural disasters before they hit. There's no new money. Even the Insurance Council of Australia, as my colleague the member for Ryan quoted—and I will quote it again—has stated that we need to spend $30 billion over the next 50 years on large-scale coastal mitigation to protect communities against increasing storm surges, erosion and rising sea levels. That is around $600 million a year. The $200 million a year the government is proposing is not enough, and our communities deserve better. This bill is not spending any new money while it is relying on stock market returns to ensure the fund stays topped up.

Perhaps the most glaring issue here is where this money comes from. The fund is allowed to invest in the very companies that are causing the climate crisis, like Santos, ExxonMobil and Whitehaven. For climate mitigation and infrastructure, Australians are being asked to rely on the stock market returns of the fossil fuel companies causing this damage. The government is choosing to rely on the ever-increasing performance and profitability of the fossil fuel industry as part of its climate policy.

The Greens believe that we should be making these fossil fuel giants pay their fair share of tax to fund the services that we need. We should not be investing in fossil fuel companies to prop them up and support our communities, because these companies are serial tax avoiders. They shift huge amounts of their profits offshore. They pay some of the lowest royalties in the world, receive billions each year in subsidies, send us the bill for the mess they make and donate millions to the major parties to get away with it. We should not be handing out money to and investing heavily in the fossil fuel industry.

With another La Nina event being declared, communities in Brisbane are anxious. They reach out to my office every single day. We are already experiencing a wet spring and we know that the rain will continue into the summer. I want the people of Brisbane to know that my office has put together a flood information sheet with key information and points of contact. We will be distributing this to every single household in the electorate. We will also be seeking community leaders and volunteers to express their interest in participating in any flood clean-up efforts with us.

I want the people of Brisbane to know that I have their back and I will keep fighting for them. The Greens and I will keep pushing for more to be spent on climate change mitigation in our communities. We want to stop the billions in subsidies to fossil fuel companies and we want to make sure our country does not remain captured by vested interests.

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