Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The island where I live and that I have the fortune to represent in this place, Tasmania, is a large, rural and regional electorate. Contrary to probably what many Australians believe, it is very vulnerable, like the rest of rural and regional Australia, to drought and to bushfires. In the last five summers, we've had three of the worst fires on record that have burned in areas where fires have never been seen, including up through our World Heritage areas, in our alpine areas and our rainforests, on the west coast.

We learnt from the 2016 fires that Tasmania didn't have the resources on hand to immediately tackle these fires—as we also learnt from this summer. My colleague Senator McKim and I initiated a Senate inquiry following the 2016 fires in Tasmania, and we also initiated a Senate inquiry in a committee that I know you have spent a lot of time in, Acting Deputy President Fawcett—the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade—that looked at the role of the Australian Defence Force in being better able to assist around a climate emergency. What came out of that committee inquiry and the evidence that we heard from witnesses was a policy, which we launched in 2016 and re-launched in 2018 following the second Senate inquiry, with the Greens committing $500 million to rural and regional Australia for a national disaster response unit. We were the first to come to this place and talk about the need for a whole revamp of the way the federal government interacts with the states around national disasters. This would have been a specialised remote natural disaster operation support capacity for the states and territories, coordinated by the federal government.

This would have covered procurement of an aerial firefighting fleet of fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft to provide direct firefighting capacity. The NDRU would also provide supervision, incident observation, fire mapping and intelligence functions. The fleet would have the flexibility to work in diverse terrain and multiple disaster events. $280 million of that $500 million would go directly into the NDRU's fleet, which could fund up to two large air tankers, five medium air tankers, four light-attack aircraft firefighters and three supervision aircraft, with a combined capacity of almost 150,000 litres. We learnt in the inquiry that we farm out and bring in many of our aircraft from overseas. We have learnt the hard lesson in recent days that some of these fleets aren't available, because fire seasons all around the world aren't as coordinated as they used to be. They are earlier—indeed, they're all year round—and it's very difficult to get these assets. As part of the national agency's setup, it would establish clear lines of responsibility with all relevant state and territory authorities. Just today the Queensland Premier called for more federal coordination and federal investment in exactly this kind of disaster response unit, which could be funded and coordinated by the federal government across all states.

These are the kinds of things we need to be looking at in the future that we are entering—a future of climate change, a future of climate emergency. A government's No. 1 role and responsibility is to protect its citizens. We heard during the Senate inquiry that climate change is one of the biggest threats to our national security. Indeed, previous US President Obama said climate change was the biggest threat to US national security. In terms of the imminent threat, the loss of life, the loss of property, the disruption to communities and the damage to the lives of everyday Australians, I would argue there is no bigger threat than our changing climate and the emergency that that poses. Yet we find funding has been pulled in New South Wales, emergency services have been defunded, Parks and Wildlife have been defunded and the Tasmanian government still hasn't been able to get a remote firefighting capability together after three summers in five years of the most devastating fires we've seen. If the government were true to its word that it wants to protect Australians and protect our national security, it's about time for it to look at exactly this kind of proposal. Put funding into the exact capabilities that we need so we are ready and able to meet the challenges when they arise. Unfortunately and sadly, scientists tell us we will be seeing a lot more of this all year round in this country in the immediate future unless we take strong action on climate change.