Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Australians are already experiencing the impacts of climate change on our health and on our wellbeing. In just over a century, our climate has already warmed by over a degree Celsius. Higher temperatures have increased the frequency of extreme weather events—heatwaves, bushfires, floods and droughts. Catastrophic events such as the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires and the 2022 eastern Australia floods demonstrate the growing toll that climate change is having and will continue to have on people's health and lives.

Increasing temperatures are making more parts of the world favourable to the spread of food, water and vector borne diseases. Global warming also threatens food and water security. Climate change affects health outcomes through its effects on mental health, productivity and workforce conditions, housing, infrastructure and population displacement. Acutely, heatwaves pose a greater threat to life than any other natural hazard, including bushfires and floods. Most at risk of dying during extreme heat are the elderly, the disabled and those from a lower socioeconomic background. Heat stress exacerbates underlying conditions like diabetes and kidney and heart disease.

Research from the ANU suggests that as many as two per cent of deaths in this country are heat related. With hot periods and bushfire seasons starting earlier and lasting longer, that figure will only increase. We're undercounting those deaths because we don't capture them in the homeless, and we don't count deaths attributable to heat stroke that are heart disease related or stroke related. Most heat related deaths occur in older houses. Think about poorly designed public housing or rental homes and what hot boxes they can become.

Air pollution is already the single largest environmental risk to public health. Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with heart disease, asthma and lung cancer. It reduces life expectancy. Air quality in this country is worse in cities affected by traffic pollution, mining and industrial activity. Darwin, we heard from the doctors who came to visit us in this place yesterday, has the worst air quality in Australia. Because poorer people live in places where housing is cheaper—next to main roads and factories—their disease burden from air pollution is twice as bad as that of people who are less socially disadvantaged.

Theoretically, the Australian government has committed to the development of Australia's first National Health and Climate Strategy, which is aimed at improving our healthcare system's ability to cope with the impact of extreme weather events. It's also committed to reducing the healthcare system's emissions, which currently make up about seven per cent of our national emissions.

But at the same time that the government has made this commitment, it has perversely increased our exposure to climate change by allowing ongoing logging of our native forests and by actively subsidising massive new coal and gas projects which will blow any attempt at emissions reduction or mitigation out of the water. Australian healthcare systems are unprepared to deal with extreme weather events. Last week Australian medical colleges representing more than 100,000 doctors, physicians and medical experts released a statement calling on the Albanese government to urgently ensure that the National Health and Climate Strategy is fully funded and that it has a national cabinet sign-off to enable urgent, coordinated and effective implementation. The strategy also has to be guided by First Nations knowledge and leadership across all aspects, including the stopping of new projects which will affect First Nations persons.

I call on the government to act on climate and health in the light of and with respect to the expert guidance provided by our scientists and by our doctors. I call on the government to act with integrity and transparency in shepherding our critical minerals and ore deposits, and supporting their processing in Australia—not overseas. I call on the government to stop subsidising the logging of native forests, which are our very best and really our only means of effective and efficient carbon capture and storage. I ask this government to stop subsidising multinationals while they make windfall profits from our oil and gas reservoirs while polluting our air, our water and our land.

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