Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be speaking on the devastating drought affecting parts of Australia and the need to address the causes of climate change to mitigate future drought. New South Wales is 100 per cent drought declared. Queensland is 50 per cent drought declared. We have farmers shooting their stock—unable to feed them—crops not growing and the land turning into a giant dust bowl. We have communities struggling. We have our environment under extreme stress. Some farmers are calling it the worst drought in generations. In April, I visited Swan Hill in northern Victoria and met with local farmers, Indigenous people and community members. I saw a river system that is in crisis and a government that's turning a blind eye. The Murray, and the Victorian communities that rely on it, are at tipping point. There are no jobs, no businesses and no thriving communities on a dead river, and that's where it's heading. That's the Murray in Victoria; the impacts of the drought in the catchment of the Darling are far, far worse. This is a crisis.

The Greens welcome and support the financial assistance for farmers, their families and the communities who are struggling with drought in the government's extension of the farm households allowance payments from three to four years. This has gone a tiny way to addressing the worst impacts of the drought, giving farmers a bit of support to enable them to buy in and pay for feed and water. But it's a bandaid. The drought relief package and the farm households support extension are inherently short term. They don't address the long-term structural changes that are needed in our agricultural environment to deal with the reality of drought and, in particular, to deal with the reality that droughts are increasing in intensity and frequency because of climate change. Even the Prime Minister acknowledged recently that droughts are going to get worse because of climate change. Only eight short years ago, Mr Turnbull supported Australia rapidly shifting our energy sources to 100 per cent renewable energy. At the launch of the Beyond Zero Emissions' 2010 report into 100 per cent renewable energy for Australia, he said, 'The science tells us that we have already exceeded the safe upper limit for atmospheric carbon dioxide.'

In June, the Greens put forward a motion that passed the Senate and was surprisingly but commendably not vocally opposed by the Turnbull government. The motion called for protection for Australian farmers and our agriculture industry by implementing the Paris Agreement, which requires us to reduce emissions so that we get a temperature that is fewer than two degrees warmer than preindustrial levels. It called on the government to support the findings of the Garnaut climate change review, which found that, without concerted action on climate change, by 2100 there would be a 92 per cent decline in irrigated agricultural production in the Murray-Darling Basin and that reducing our carbon pollution is the cheapest and most cost-effective option for reducing climate change impacts on both our agricultural industries and rural and regional communities. This is because we cannot just adapt to four degrees of warming. We can't just adapt to a scenario where the climate of our wheat-growing areas has become the climate of the central deserts. You can't grow wheat when you have perpetual drought.

So what the heck are Mr Turnbull and his government doing? We heard this morning that Mr Turnbull and his government are looking at underwriting a new coal-fired power station, for goodness sake! His government wants the Adani coalmine, the largest coalmine in the Southern Hemisphere, to go ahead—incidentally, with an unlimited water licence in areas of Queensland that are currently going through this drought. It's almost like he now doesn't believe that climate change is real enough to warrant proper action.

The coalition's response to climate change was demonstrated by former Deputy Prime Minister and agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, last week. He said:

If I thought that there was something that we could do in Canberra, that we'd all go into that big wonderful chamber and vote on an issue that would actually change the climate and make it wetter, then I'll move the motion and we'll do it.

But it's not. What we're doing there is people saying this is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction and somehow that's going to affect global climate. It won't.

This is Barnaby Joyce from New England, a region suffering dreadfully in this horrible drought. There is a tiny element of Mr Joyce's climate change denialism that is in fact correct: it is going to take a global effort to fix climate change. But Australia needs to pull its weight. Australia needs to be a team player.

Let me refresh the minds of the coalition on what it means to be a team player. We're coming up to the AFL grand final soon. Each team has 18 players on the field. Each player contributes to that team. The team will get nowhere, will not succeed unless they all work together to achieve their common goal, which is kicking goals. What happens if you have a few players not pulling their weight? What happens if you have someone saying: 'Oh well, I'm not the star player, I'm not Buddy Franklin, so whatever I do doesn't matter. I'll just relax here and let all the others do the work.' That's not how teams work. On the global team of polluters, Australia is actually one of those big players. As part of the same global team that has to work together to tackle climate change, we need to pull up our socks and contribute.

Although Australia might account for a relatively small percentage of global carbon pollution, we're actually the 14th-biggest emitter overall. Out of 196 countries, despite having a population of only 25 million, we're really close to the top of the league table of highest polluters per person. We are out rated only by the oil-producing states and by Trinidad, Tobago and Brunei Darussalam, who are not great role models. None of the big emitters above us on the league table have the massive per person pollution that we have, not even the US. Let's have a think about our exports. We're the biggest liquid natural gas exporter in the world. We are the biggest net exporter of coal in the world, providing a full one-third of global coal exports.

If Australia is to be a team player, we need to act on climate change. We need to embrace renewable energy and create the jobs and the industries of the future, not stick with last century's energy systems because the fossil fuel mates from the big end of town have donated to both the government and the Labor Party. If the Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce and the coalition really want to protect our farmers, our agricultural sector and our nation's food security, they need to stop supporting polluting coal and the fossil fuel industry and start getting serious about reducing Australia's carbon pollution. In the words of Prime Minister Turnbull eight years ago, 'We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet.' (Time expired)