Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome your interjection. You have the opportunity to speak in this debate subsequently, if you wish to, and you can explain exactly what the Prime Minister was doing at APEC, given that you do not believe that human activity actually has anything to do with climate change.

I will return now to the federal government’s own 2005 report, which I referred to earlier, which outlined some major threats to our marine environment and coastal communities. These include rising sea levels; more severe cyclones, storm surges and storms; possible reductions in average rainfall and run-off in southern and much of eastern Australia; rainfall increases across the tropical north; a reduction in rainfall in south-west Australia of a further 20 per cent—which is really quite chilling for those of us who live in South Australia—and a change in ocean currents affecting our coastal waters. These are amongst the consequences that the government’s own 2005 report, Climate change: risk and vulnerability, identified. Of course, we did not see action from the Howard government in response to that.

As Senator Milne’s motion outlines, one of the most significant consequences of global warming will be rising sea levels. The total observed sea level rise over the 20th century was in the order of 10 to 20 centimetres. Whilst there will be regional and local variations in that rise, there is clear scientific agreement—which Senator Bernardi obviously does not agree with—that sea levels are rising in response to past greenhouse gas emissions and that they will continue to rise during the 21st century.

The IPCC report published in February this year, about which there has been much discussion, projected a sea level rise of between 0.18 metres and 0.59 metres by 2100. Since that report was released, a number of reports have suggested that in fact that was an underestimation of the possible sea level rise as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets. America’s leading climate change scientist, James Hansen, and five other leading scientists have suggested that sea level rises could be as much as several metres by the same date. As a consequence, it is generally accepted that the coastline will retreat horizontally 50 to 100 times the vertical sea level rise. Dr Barrie Pittock, a leading Australian climate change scientist, has stated:

There’s a crude rule of thumb which applies theoretically just to straight sandy beach, which suggests for every metre rise in sea level the coastline will retreat or go inland by 100m.

Similarly, Dr John Church of CSIRO argues that for every one centimetre of sea level rise you get about a metre of coastal erosion. The IPCC’s April report, Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, stated that, with regard to coastal impacts, coasts are projected to be exposed to increasing risks including coastal erosion; corals will be vulnerable to thermal stress; increases in sea surface temperature will lead to more frequent coral-bleaching events and widespread mortality; and, of course, there will be an effect on coastal wetlands such as salt marshes and mangroves—especially where they are constrained on the landward side. Any rise in sea levels will have an impact on coastal communities, which will face a significant challenge in the future. They already face one now as they prepare for the dramatic impacts of climate change. The fact is that the Commonwealth government must help them to meet this challenge.

The 2007 report of the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Engineering Council, entitled Climate change in Australia: regional impacts and adaptation: managing the risk for Australia, nominated cities and coastal communities as one of the six key sectors at risk in the nation. Five priority coastal regions were identified for particular attention: the Brisbane-Gold Coast-Tweed Heads coastline, the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong coastline, Melbourne-Geelong, and Adelaide and Perth. Continuing on the point I made at the outset, which is that climate change is an economic challenge as well as a social and an environmental one, one of the areas in which this has already started to occur is in relation to insurance costs. We know that insurers have to factor in the additional cost of various events which are predicted to increase as a result of climate change. I outlined some of these earlier: increased cyclones, storms and so forth. Obviously sea level rise is another one. This is one of the areas where we see that the Howard government lags behind not only community sentiment but also business sentiment. If you go and talk to many of Australia’s leading insurance companies, you will find that these companies have been pricing into their forward projections for some time the likelihood of increased weather disruption, severity of storms and so forth, as a result of climate change. My recollection is that Insurance Australia Group is one of the companies which were part of the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change. These are companies that recognise, as prudent corporate entities, that they have to manage the risk of climate change just as they manage any other business risk. It will have a financial impact, and that is why these companies want the government to do its part to set the framework to enable them to more effectively meet it. What we know is that insurers and other leading Australian companies have been factoring the cost of climate change into their business risk management plans. It is unfortunate that the government has not factored it in over 11 years and continues to simply engage in window dressing.

As I said, rising insurance costs and issues of compensation and appropriate zoning will need to be factored into Australia’s future coastal planning and management. Climate change pressures, particularly the threat of increases in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, have led to reconsideration of existing actuarial assessments of extreme weather risks. A potential outcome of these impacts is an increase in the cost of insurance cover, higher excesses and even possibly withdrawal of coverage in some areas as insurance companies would not be able to provide insurance at a reasonable cost or at all. Mr Bruce Thomas of Swiss Re stated:

Houses built on the coast and rivers, in areas that have a larger than one-in-100-year flood events, would find insurance too prohibitive.

Frankly, what we have is a change in the earth’s weather patterns that is of extraordinary proportions over time. It is the largest and most significant economic, social and environmental challenge that any future government should face. What is regrettable is that the Howard government, after 11 long years, has done nothing to prepare Australia for this. What we have instead is a government that is stacked with climate change sceptics. This has impacted on its ability to reasonably respond. It has no plans for the future when it comes to climate change; what it has is a plan until the next election. (Time expired)