Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the best-ever member for Higgins for her question! I'll say this: the COP 27, the UN Climate Change Conference, has begun at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, and it will sit for the coming fortnight. It sits in a context where it comes after the hottest decade on record. Indeed, the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record. Think about that. Every one of the eight hottest years on record were in the last eight years—the last eight years!

What we've seen of course is not just the impact of this with the devastating floods in places like Pakistan; we don't actually have to look offshore—we can look here at the increased number of extreme weather events and the increase in the severity of them. Just before question time I was speaking to the member for Riverina about Forbes in his electorate, which we visited just a couple of weeks ago. We visited as the floodwaters were going down. They went up again, and fortunately for the people of Forbes, who've done it so tough, they've gone down again. Just a week ago, with the New South Wales Premier, I visited Lismore, where we're actually having to buy homes to move people out of the floodplain because they do not feel safe in those communities. We've had the devastating bushfires, including in areas of rainforest that had never burnt before, ever. The Secretary-General of the UN said last night that the science is clear that any hope of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees means achieving global net zero emissions by 2050. But that 1.5-degree goal is on life support, and the machines are rattling. This parliament—the major parties—apparently are all agreed on net zero by 2050, except for the rhetoric, and you wouldn't know it if you followed the statements that are aimed.

So, our government is acting. One of our first acts was to sign up to our changed nationally determined contribution of 43 per cent by 2030. We've enshrined in law net zero by 2050, and we're investing in renewable energy. Climate change is a challenge for our generation, but it's also a challenge that we need to work with the rest of the world on.

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