Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have not seen this week from the government is a reboot; what we have seen this week is a re-run. It is like watching an old sitcom when you know all the punchlines—but the jokes are the government's policies. If the government wanted to restore some of its credibility, it could start with meaningful action on climate change. It could drop its shameful Direct Action Plan which, according to the Climate Change Authority, is unlikely to deliver even the minimum five per cent target without significant complementary action.

As a Queenslander, I grew up in one of the most unique environments on the planet bordered by one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef. If we do not take effective action on climate change, the Barrier Reef is finished. The clock is ticking and the alarms are going off.

The fifth IPCC report released in 2014 concluded that without significant action for climate change, extensive and permanent damage caused by increasing water temperatures around coral reef systems in Australia would occur by mid-century—that is the alarm that is going off. This point was made by President Obama in his Brisbane address at the G20.

But what was the response of the Liberal Party? Rather than change their climate change policies, they carry on as if the Reef were not threatened or that it could, in fact, be saved by adaptation policies. Of course, that is scientific voodoo—nothing more, nothing less. The only thing that can save the Great Barrier Reef is stopping our oceans from warming and rising. That means we have to take effective action on carbon emissions.

A recent study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that long-lived corals in the Great Barrier Reef are now growing 15 per cent less than they were before 1990. They also found that this was unprecedented in the 400 years of records they have inspected. Similar results have been found by several other studies for other regions. What we have in the government is a bunch of climate change denialists running around who want to give handouts to big polluters.

One of my proudest days in the parliament was the day that we took effective action on carbon emissions and climate change. We did that because we wanted to be able to look our grandchildren in the eye, our future generations, and say, 'We took serious action to stop dangerous climate change and to save our precious environment, most particularly the Great Barrier Reef.'

The Great Barrier Reef is in good condition relative to other coral reefs elsewhere in the world, but we know its health has been reduced. It can only be saved for our grandchildren and subsequent generations by effective action on climate change and none of this voodoo science from the government— (Time expired)