Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

In south-western Australia—up to 80 per cent more drought months in south-western Australia. And this is a prediction of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, two organisations that people in regional and rural Australia have had a lot of confidence in. I will take Senator Joyce’s interjection, where he jokes, ‘In Greenland’. This is not about Greenland; this is about our country, our agriculture, our cities, our industries and our environment—and about bushfires.

Senator Back has left the chamber. I respect his very deep interest in the issues of bushfires. I make this point: we are also likely to see an increase in very extreme fire weather days. That is one of the effects of climate change that was documented again by the Bushfire CRC, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO in 2007, when they said that very extreme fire weather days now occur on average once every two to 11 years at most sites, by 2020 they may occur twice as often and by 2050 they may occur four to five times as often. And this is science that is two years old. In fact, most of the scientific evidence is that it is worsening far more quickly than anyone anticipated: increased risk of hail events over the south-east coast of Australia, an increase in the proportion of tropical cyclones. And ABARE figures estimate a 63 per cent reduction in exports of key commodities in the next 20 years. With the occurrence of worst-case climate change, assuming no effective adaptation and high population change, Australia could become a net importer of wheat as soon as 2015. Again, that is a report that I previously cited. Why is it that people who claim to represent rural and regional Australia can come into this place and try and avoid talking about these impacts? How is it that people who are elected to this place can simply ignore these facts?