Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is ecological debt—understand it. Let me tell you about the extreme weather events around the country, the death of the Great Barrier Reef, the loss of productivity in the Murray-Darling system and the extreme drought. We have parts of Australia now suffering in an extraordinary way—in the Riverland, in Queensland, right across the country; and, of course, no more so than in Victoria. The ecological debt of this country was racked up in an enormous way by the Howard government, and instead of addressing the ecological debt and the hideous dependence on foreign oil—those vulnerabilities—all the Howard government did was rely on tax cuts: rivers of gold, manna from heaven. Australia had never been better off; there were dollars thrown up in the air.

The reality is that we ran into massive ecological debt, and every time they approved new coalmines and new coal ports they were ratcheting up ecological debt for future generations. The difference between a debt on an economic sheet and an ecological debt is that you can pay off financial debt but you cannot recover if you go so far into ecological debt that you kill the system. It cannot be recovered. That is what is going on with climate change right now. We are experiencing dangerous climate change and we are in a headlong rush into catastrophic climate change.

Scientists around the world are telling us that we are approaching tipping points, if we have not already passed them. We have heard the stories about the melt of the Arctic ice. We know that the West Antarctic icesheet is vulnerable. We have seen the collapse of glaciers around the world. That kind of ecological debt that we have plunged future generations into may not be recoverable. So the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull and all these members of the coalition cannot claim that they can look future generations in the eye and say that they have avoided debt.

Not only have they plunged future generations into ecological debt, but now they are actually preventing putting people to work to address that debt. The Greens have negotiated successfully for money, as part of this stimulus package, to go to communities to address natural heritage and built heritage issues. Money will go to local communities and local governments to put people to work. We want to put people to work repairing ecosystems. That is a way of stimulating the economy: providing people with paid work restoring Australia’s biodiversity and doing everything they can. We have so much work to do in natural resource management to recover some of these areas—hence we got the $10 million for bioremediation in the lower Murray and the lakes. We are doing that: putting people to work to address the ecological debt that you ran up. And now you do not even want people to go to work doing that. Having run up the debt you are not even prepared to put up the money to address that debt and recover some it.

Let me talk for a minute about social debt as well. I would invite the opposition to go into schools around the country and see how many of them have leaking toilets. There are extraordinary facilities in some very well-off schools in the country, but if you go travelling around rural and regional Australia you will find communities suffering in terms of social debt. There is not enough affordable housing in this country and we have a problem with homelessness. The Howard government was prepared to give tax cuts to the highest income earners in the country while schools had leaking toilets, while people were homeless and while there was no money for affordable housing. There was no massive investment when it was required in public education across the country. And we ran down our skills base, hollowed out the manufacturing sector and left ourselves as Asia’s quarry—to the point where, as a result of Howard government policies, not only are we the quarry for China but, at the rate we are going in terms of this deal with Rio Tinto, China will own the quarry. All of that is because you are worshippers of a free market.