Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of this proposal. Let me begin by discussing what is at stake here. We are blessed to have one of the most incredible natural wonders on earth off the coast of Queensland: the Great Barrier Reef. This incredible jewel, this natural wonder, the only living organism that can be seen from space, is a magical underwater world that has brought so much pleasure to people not just here in Australia but right around the world. Indeed, it is a source of wonder and delight and something that we should all feel very privileged to have right here on our doorstep.

Yet here we are, in an age of catastrophic global warming, at a time when we know the window for action is closing, with a proposal for a jobs-destroying, polluting, climate-killing coalmine in Queensland that we know not only will spell disaster for the jobs that rely on the Great Barrier Reef but, indeed, may mean the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. I say to those people who have not seen what is going on right now in Queensland: go and see it with your own eyes. Last year, Senator Larissa Waters and I did that. We went to visit some of those northern reefs, and what you see there is what were once vibrant ecosystems transformed into underwater deserts. You see the corals, which once showed the greens and other incredible hues, completely wiped of all colour and all life and effectively transformed into an underwater desert of a sickly yellow in some parts and a ghostly white in other parts.

Faced with the prospect of losing this incredible natural wonder, something that we are custodians of and should be handing to future generations, we have a government that, instead of acting with urgency, is proposing to destroy the Great Barrier Reef. Today we see evidence of a massive cyclone descending on the Queensland coast. We are going to see more of them if the Carmichael mine goes ahead—more intense cyclones and more extreme weather. That is the cost of global warming. That is a scientific fact.