Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is a country of drought and flooding rains and, sadly bushfire. As we speak in here, a natural disaster is unfolding. This is on the back of bushfires in many parts of the country that are now flooding, and, of course, we've had a pandemic. I know that in my community our thoughts are really with all those who are currently facing such disaster, and it brings home how much the rest of Australia helped my community when we were in the grips of bushfire.

These events have only strengthened the conviction and resolve of my community, and many communities around the nation, to demand urgent, sustained and consistent action to address climate change and to tackle emissions. The vacuum of meaningful, effective climate action policy continues to frustrate. Back in the previous parliament, I instigated the first Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action. My aim as a crossbench MP was to create a safe space, a neutral space, where all members could come and hear from experts. When this parliament resumed, I worked with the member for Indi and the member for Warringah to start another group. Just last week we hosted a forum on transport emissions, and we even offered members the chance to get up close and personal to a Mercedes electric vehicle.

Transport is the third largest source of emissions in Australia, and emissions are rebounding back to pre-COVID levels as the restrictions are lifting. COVID has taught the world many things. One of them is that if there is sufficient urgency, we can deliver—such as with the vaccine. That happened in a year. COVID has taught us the importance of building sovereign capability. Australia needs to improve our ability to adapt and to respond rapidly to change and to manufacture, and we need to do this on our own soil. One of the guest speakers at the transport forum was the Norwegian Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Paul Larsen. Seventy per cent of new cars in Norway are electric vehicles, and this country of just five million people have more Teslas than any nation except the United States.

Norway has a fraction of our land mass and road network, but it is similar to Australia in that it is a large producer and exporter of fossil fuels, namely oil and gas. But Norway sources almost 100 cent of its electricity from renewable hydropower, and it has embraced both a carrot and a stick approach to reaching ambitious emissions targets. They embrace technology as well as tax and financial incentives to reach targets. When it comes to electric vehicles they have been incentivising for the past decade. Mr Larsen said that people want to be green but that economic incentives are also important.

Australia can introduce incentives. The federal government can offer tax credits for up-front EV purchases and remove the luxury car tax, which is obsolete in a nation that no longer manufactures its own vehicles. The government can offer grants and low-interest loans to roll out changing infrastructure. In my electorate, the local council has been working with Regional Development Australia. We now have an electric highway linking Kangaroo Island to the Fleurieu Peninsula and the Adelaide Hills. That has been a huge reason for many people with electric vehicles to come to my electorate and have a holiday. The government can also change the fringe benefits tax to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles in corporate fleets to boost the flow of good, quality-priced EVs into the domestic market. Government can lead by example and buy their own fleet.

We're not doing any of that, are we? In fact, Victoria is introducing a road tax from 1 July, and my state of South Australia is looking on with the intention of doing the same. As Tim Washington, the chair of Australia's Electric Vehicle Council, and another guest at our forum, said: 'Australia isn't just lagging in the electric vehicle race. We're not even in the race.' Elsewhere, nations are seeing the economic and employment opportunities that come from global energy transformation and looking to the manufacturing opportunities of electric vehicles. Australia could do the same. Australia should do the same.

Until recently, Australia had a strong and proud tradition in automotive manufacturing, especially in my home state of South Australia. There was Holden. My dad worked at Mitsubishi for a very long time. The loss of automotive manufacturing jobs resulted in hundreds of direct and indirect job losses. We should not accept the closure of traditional high-volume manufacturing as if it were the end of all vehicle manufacturing endeavours in Australia. The introduction of many new electric vehicle manufacturers across the globe demonstrates that there is enormous opportunity. We just need the will.

We built high-quality, high-volume vehicles in the past and we could now produce high-value, high-performance cars. There is a future in Australia, with the renewed interest in Australian based manufacturing, if we pool the experiences, capabilities and knowledge that still exists in our nation to build cars again. We can also learn from the experience of global manufacturers. Our forum was a conversation starter, and it was pleasing to see so many government members there. I hope that we can move beyond a discussion and start mapping out an exciting future of what could be possible.

The tackling of emissions from transport is just one way that our country must address our responsibilities and obligations to reduce the impact we have on the environment. Methane, while shorter lived than carbon dioxide, has a much greater impact. In Australia, agriculture is the main source of methane production, but, to the credit of the agriculture sector, their total methane production has continued to decline. This is a consequence of a proactive sector that has actively endorsed policies leading to better management of livestock, manure and landfill. This sector has demonstrated that change is possible and that there is an appetite to investigate and adopt scientific research. Wouldn't it be exciting if we did that in here?

One exciting and recent development in the sector is the production of seaweed supplements to feed cattle. While seaweed supplement studies are not new, the longest field test undertaken to date used a seaweed genus that contains bromoform, which reduces the production of methane in cows and could potentially reduce the total production of methane in livestock by 80 per cent. That is huge. That is a game changer. To put this into perspective, Future Feed, which is a partnership between the CSIRO, Meat & Livestock Australia and James Cook University, stated:

If 10% of the livestock producers added 1.0% of … Seaweed Meal to the daily feed intake of … livestock, it is like removing 100 million cars off the road.

The study found that there were no changes in meat taste and that, over time, the gut microbes became more efficient, suggesting lower feed supplementation may produce the same result, given time for the animal's gut to adopt the new feeding regime. While this study is undergoing field trials, and early celebrations should be tempered, we should applaud the agriculture sector's commitment to engaging and embracing scientific research to mitigate their environmental impact. Indeed, leaders have established forums and groups to provide a recognised voice for the sector, and one such organisation is Farmers for Climate Action, a movement of farmers, ag leaders and rural Australians collectively working to be part of the change.

I've talked about the value of seaweed. I'm now going to talk about the value of seagrass—again, we're one great big island; let's do this, it's so exciting—and its role in blue carbon production, a concept that is attracting global attention and one that offers countries such as Australia, with a diverse coastline, the ability to really address our emissions. Blue carbon is a natural phenomenon of carbon capture and storage in our coastal ecosystems, including seagrass meadows, salt marshes and mangroves, and these ecosystems act as enormous carbon sinks by accumulating and retaining carbon in the plants and soil at rates of up to four times as much carbon per area as land based forest. Australia has millions of hectares of these ecosystems along our glorious coastline, South Australia's being the sixth largest in the nation.

With the knowledge of how effective our coastal ecosystems are at capturing carbon storage, I think it's really important that we ask all of the people who are members of the Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action to come along and hear about blue carbon. We'll be doing something in August, and I'm very excited that a lovely young woman from my electorate called Mikayla Schwarz will be coming here. She is an expert in blue carbon and she'll be coming here to teach us all about it and tell us what a wonderful opportunity it is for our nation. We could do so much more, but we just sit back and watch the rest of the world leap ahead, day by day. We are being left behind. I would urge every member to come along. I think you'll find it very valuable.