Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Let's get one thing clear: climate change is not a football match, where we have the luxury of barracking for one side or the other. It's a fact, or rather a set of facts, and managing it is not optional or something to be kicked down the road. Climate change is already affecting us all. Concern about it and the lack of cohesive policy to mitigate it and prepare for it were big factors in the outcome of the 2022 election. This goes directly to the current debate that we're having about renewable energy and carbon reduction targets and the need for calm, consistent policymaking on these matters.

People in rural and regional Australia are on the front line of climate change. Storms of greater frequency, fires of greater intensity, repeating floods, escalating insurance costs—all these things are having a shocking impact on Australians who live outside major cities. This is of great concern to those who live in both urban and rural Australia, because we're in this together. This affects our economy, this affects our community, this affects our people. I note that the coalition is confecting a city-country divide where none exists, not for our collective future but for what they believe is their survival. Meanwhile, Victoria's south-west coast received the lowest rainfall on record in the nine months to May. Western Victoria overall has also experienced record dry conditions between February and May this year. Farmers report the driest conditions in decades, with ewes deserting their offspring and lambs starving. This is where the focus should be, not on political pointscoring.

As someone who grew up in regional Australia and who later lived and worked in regional Australia, including covering fires and floods as a journalist, I'm not going to allow the coalition to run around unchecked creating a city-country divide to save their political skins. I note that during the last sitting the member for Indi moved more than a dozen amendments to support regional communities under the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill. These amendments were supported by the crossbench but not by the National Party or the Liberal Party. Enough of the phony outrage designed to divide and delay rather than fix it faster.

In Bayside, Melbourne, which I represent, predictions are that parts of waterfront suburbs will be under water in the future due to climate-change-related sea-level rise. Serious coastal erosion around Port Phillip Bay is already a major problem that local councils are grappling with, frustrated with the lack of cohesion between the various levels of government.

This is not State of Origin. This is not mate against mate. We're all in this together—not that the government should be smug about its record. Many members of the Goldstein community can't see much difference between Scott Morrison's so-called gas led recovery and this government's Future Gas Strategy, which sees the Commonwealth subsidising fossil fuel giants out to 2050.

Indeed, we should be earmarking gas for domestic consumption at a price reflecting the fact that it's a resource for all Australians, and appropriately taxing export profits to fund the renewable energy transition. How ridiculous that there is talk of winter gas shortages when 80 per cent of our gas goes overseas, and when those that we export it to, Japan specifically, are apparently re-exporting it to others, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. The indications are also that we will struggle to achieve the government's target of 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030, the key to getting to a 43 per cent reduction in carbon emissions as promised by Labor at the election and legislated shortly after coming to office. This will not be helped by either new fossil fuel projects approved by Labor or flip-flopping on renewables by the coalition as it goes nuclear but provides no detail on cost.

Now, I'm not an ideological opponent of nuclear, but my questions are these: How much will it cost to build and run? Isn't it the case that the energy will be more expensive? What's the realistic timeframe? What's the business case for doing it when, unlike most countries, we have abundant cheaper alternatives? 'Trust me,' the opposition says with no costings; no estimates on how much power nuclear would supply, how much more gas would be required to underpin this and how much water would be needed to run the reactors; little community warning on consultation; where the waste will go—and on and on go the unanswered questions. As Dennis Denuto put it in The Castle, the Leader of the Opposition wants us to believe in the vibe, but this is real, not a movie. Stack up the evidence or get on with the transition. (Time expired)

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