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

by leave—I'd like to join with the government and the opposition in thanking the incredible effort of emergency services workers who are putting their lives on the line, right now, in defending property and ensuring that Australian lives are not put at risk. We also extend our deepest sympathies and our thoughts to the many Australians who have lost their homes, their property and their animals and have experienced great trauma as a result of these—in the words of the leader of the Senate—'unprecedented fires'.

But the Australian Greens don't just offer our thanks; we acknowledge that these fires will only continue to get more frequent, more severe and more intense and put more lives at risk. Emergency services workers have said, unequivocally, that it is absolutely critical we deal with human induced climate change. If we are not going to do that, we will be putting their lives and the lives of many more Australians at risk. It is absolutely critical that we acknowledge we are in a climate emergency, that ministers who fail to act on climate change are putting the lives of Australians at risk and that we must do everything we can to transition our economy away from polluting fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, to renewable energy, to decrease pollution and to ensure that our climate crisis, which is contributing to these fires, is dealt with in a way that is consistent with the science, with the evidence, with what emergency services workers are demanding of us, with what doctors are demanding of us and with what the science is demanding of all of us.