Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Australians speak of climate change they talk about a crisis that will hit us in the future—as something that will affect Australians' lives in 20 to 30 years. In the Pacific Islands the story is much different. Climate change is a present danger, and it is affecting lives now.

Pacific Islanders do not contribute very much to climate change. Pacific Islands collectively contribute 0.03 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but they bear the worst effects of climate change. They are the most vulnerable people in the world when it comes to the effects of climate change.

In January 2014 the Fijian village of Vunidogolo was relocated several kilometres inland because of the advancing sea. In the Marshall Islands staple crops, such as breadfruit, are now being wiped out and are no longer providing a valuable food source for many communities. In Tuvalu, Cyclone Pam wiped out all the coconut palms on many of the islands of the archipelago. In many Pacific nations now wells that have supplied communities with water for hundreds of years are becoming salinised and are no longer able to be used. Recently—and this highlights perfectly the case of climate change in the Pacific—the government of Kiribati purchased land on the island of Vanua Levu from the Fijian government because they know that in the future they are going to have to move communities from their islands of Kiribati to other parts of the Pacific.

Throughout the Pacific, diseases that were once under control are re-emerging in epidemic proportions. In Fiji last year there was a dengue fever outbreak in which 20,000 native Fijians were affected. NASA reports that the world sea level has risen by eight centimetres since 1992 and continues to do so. For many Pacific Islands if this rate of increase is not addressed their nations will simply be wiped out. For Pacific Islanders, climate change is urgent.

Australia is the lead economy in the Pacific. We are the wealthiest nation of the peoples in the Pacific. We have the highest living standards of people in the Pacific and, unfortunately, we are one of the largest per capita contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions anywhere throughout the world. This is something that our friends in the Pacific know. They want Australia to help them to take action.

But, unfortunately, this Liberal government has let our friends in the Pacific down. By removing a price on carbon, an economy-wide mechanism to reduce emissions in our economy, we have let our friends in the Pacific Islands down. As a result of the removal of the carbon price, electricity emissions from that sector, which were once reducing under Labor's carbon price, have now begun to increase again because of the removal of that policy. The Liberals have cut the renewable energy target. Australia has become the only nation in the world that through government programs is actively discouraging an increase in the amount of renewable energy that we want in our country. The government is saying that we want less renewable energy than we otherwise would have had under the previous policies of the Labor government.

This government has cut funding to climate change bodies and climate change adaptation throughout the Pacific and, in the greatest of insults, the immigration minister of our nation sought to make jokes about the plight of Pacific Islanders when it comes to climate change. I say to our friends in the Pacific Islands that the minister does not speak for Australians. The minister does not hold the views of most Australians when it comes to tackling climate change.

Pacific Island people feel let down by Australia, and they are expressing that disappointment. Earlier this year, the Fijian Prime Minister described Australia as leading a 'coalition of the selfish'. The Marshall Islands foreign minister, Tony de Brum, has said that he is very disappointed that Australia got rid of its price on carbon. And Australia's commitment to Paris in a couple of weeks' time of a 26 to 28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 is woefully inadequate to Pacific Islanders. It will not keep them within a two-degree-warming scenario. Australia must be doing more to help our friends in the Pacific Islands to tackle climate change. (Time expired)