Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is somewhat of a segue from my previous comments in debate on the take note motion relating to the Great Barrier Reef. I was listening intently to the very few government speakers on what is the biggest and most momentous bill, as many on this side have said and rightly so, to go through this parliament—which is the government’s emissions trading scheme bill. All they have on the list are three speakers, one of whom was the old faithful, Senator McEwen. Just give her the notes and she will read them. She mentioned the bushfires, and that is why I stand in the chamber on this particular issue. She related the Victorian bushfires of Black Saturday—in particular, I dare say—to climate change. This is the same point that I was making with the Great Barrier Reef: be an extremist, find the most extreme case as your example, and then that becomes your case. But, of course, it is not. Not even the Victorian royal commission, which spent months and millions of dollars on the Victorian bushfires cause and effect, ever raised the suggestion of climate change. And that was a royal commission. There was no connection at all. What foolishness, what ignorance and what amateurishness!

Did Senator McEwen think that it was just a point of debate and that it would go unnoticed? It is a little more serious to the Victorians than just a point of debate that she might use in this chamber. It ought to have been suggested to her that she study it better. What about the decades of lack of state management of those forests that went up? What about the lack of resources provided for managing those forests? What about proper road networks and resources for the Country Fire Authority? I would say, what about the throwing out of cattle grazing in the high plains of Gippsland? What a tragedy and what a destruction of Australian tradition. There would not have been a man from Snowy River if the Labor Party had been in power at that time. In the two times they have been in state government—the Cain and Brumby governments—they threw all those mountain men and cattle graziers off the high plains country. What about that? There were no bushfires, certainly not to this degree, when the cattle were grazing in leisurely fashion in the high plains country of Gippsland. What about that as a reason for increased bushfires?

And this is the key: what about the neglect of back-burning and reducing of fuel loads? My own colleague here in Western Australia, Senator Back, a firefighter himself, tells me that when the Western Australian volunteers came over here they were stunned by the Victorian fuel loads. At such a level were they—and I have forgotten the figures but it was something like 10 times greater than a Western Australian firefighter would tackle in his own state—that the situation had become impossible to tackle. Why didn’t Senator McEwen mention something about that? What about the greater population that has moved into these areas? That is part of the tragedy too. We have a greater population—not that I suggest that there is anything wrong with that, but they have moved into this sort of bushland and local councils will not allow them to clear around their houses. What about the planning laws? There are all sorts of reasons—and correct reasons, truthful reasons—why we had those disastrous bushfires in Victoria and why we ought to protect ourselves this coming summer, and climate change has nothing to do with it.

But this is the point. They hold up these icons. If time permits me, I will find something else to stand up with and continue my rage against the extremism of climate change. Sea level is the latest icon, and we noticed Senator Wong using it today in question time. She was attempting to scare people and connect climate change and the so-called sea level rise and flooding of the eastern seaboard of Australia. The sea level rise is their latest little extremist icon. Now they have lost the Antarctic, I suppose that sounds like a good one. If time permits during debate on some other appropriate report, I am going to stand up and put that to rest too. It is a load of rubbish. Greater experts than Senator Wong have put paid to it. We are meant to believe Senator Wong and a House of Representatives report saying that sea levels are going to swamp the eastern seaboard, and those knaves in the New South Wales government— (Time expired)