Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join all in this place in offering our deepest condolences and sympathies to all of the people who've suffered so grievously because of the terrible bushfires we've seen in our country over the past few months. Our thoughts are with the communities that have been devastated by these fires. Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the people who have died in these fires. We offer not only our condolences but, in fact, our genuine hopes that we can rebuild the communities so devastated by these fires, and we stand ready to work with communities who've been impacted to achieve this.

We're in great debt to the courage and bravery of our firefighters—both people who are professional firefighters paid to fight fires and the many thousands of volunteers who gave up their own time, which they could be spending at work or with their families and in their communities, to fight these fires. We genuinely thank you. It is impossible to express accurately the size of our debt to these people. They are genuine heroes, and we profoundly thank them for their sacrifice and for their bravery.

All of us were also no doubt aghast to see not only so many lives lost and so many homes and communities destroyed—33 people dead, people who won't return to the arms of their partners, their children, their parents and their communities, and not just Australian people but also three brave US firefighting personnel who perished as well—but also the death of so many animals: over one billion animals dead according to some estimates. The impact of these fires is almost impossible to comprehend and to come to grips with. But we must try to do that. Every Australian must try to do that. I know every member of this parliament will not only try to do that but do everything we can to ensure that our response as community leaders and political leaders in this country reflects the hopes and desires of the people of Australia.

But words are not enough in response to these fires. Speeches in this place are not enough, in themselves, in response to these fires, because those of us that have followed the climate science know that these fires have been made more likely because of global heating. We know that these fires have been made to burn more fiercely because of global heating, and we know that, as a result, more lives have been placed in danger. Temperature records are crumbling around the world. At the moment, under a business-as-usual scenario, we are heading to about three degrees of global warming, and we are only just over one degree now. Three degrees has us heading towards catastrophe, and we need to make sure we take action according to what the science is telling us.

I know in my home state of Tasmania—and we were affected by fires over the last couple of months, along with many other places around the country—we have seen fires over the last few years where ecosystems that were not fire adapted have burned, and we have also seen ecosystems which the Fire Service believed could not burn go up in flames. Again, like around the world, we have seen our communities threatened. In Tasmania, our beautiful wilderness, precious ecosystems and far, far too many animals have been devastated by fires—again, I say, fires that were made more likely and more dangerous because of the breakdown of our climate.

We all have to understand this is just the beginning. Climate change is a continuum, and the science is telling us the more we emit, the more fires we are going to get, the more fiercely those fires will burn, the more people and animals will die and the more communities will be devastated.

We are at a moment in time when we need to acknowledge that these fires, as devastating and as tragic as they were—and as they still are, as they burn around us today—give us the opportunity to reimagine the way we do business in this country. They give us the opportunity to reimagine the far-too-close links between political parties in this place and big corporations who have business models predicated on digging up and burning fossil fuels and on strip-mining our native forests. We need to take this opportunity to reimagine that relationship. We need to break that nexus between big coal, big oil, big gas and big forestry and the parties in this place who take donations from such corporations, whose business models are predicated on increasing fire risk in our country. Unless those major parties break that nexus, we are staring down the barrel of increased emissions, and increased impacts from fire and flood in Australia.

We have to make sure that we in this place are acting for the greater good, not for the benefit of big polluters. And we need donations law reform urgently so that more of us in this place can act in the public good and more of us in this place can deliver outcomes and policy solutions that are based on what the climate science is telling us. So let's not let the corrupting influence of the big, polluting corporate donors in this place rob us, rob our children and rob our grandchildren of a future. While the words spoken in this place are no doubt well meant and genuinely spoken, the great challenge that we're all collectively facing in this place is to marry up our actions with the words that we are speaking. The Greens don't take these donations, which is one of the reasons that we've been able to develop a clear plan to phase out of coal and to embrace the jobs-rich renewable energy revolution.

The Greens' green new deal is in significant part about pump-priming a genuine, modern manufacturing industry in this country so that our country can take the place we should have in the global debate around our response to the breakdown of our climate. That place should be as a global leader, exporting to the rest of the world our expertise, our skills, clean energy and components that we need to generate genuinely renewable energy. We owe them that, because for so long—for far too long—what we've exported to the rest of the world has been our fossil fuels. So I say to the fossil fuel companies—big oil, big gas and big coal—and I say to those logging companies whose business model relies on strip-mining our native forests: be on notice. We cannot simply keep shuffling down the path of business as usual and lead our people and people everywhere around the world into a climate catastrophe.

We will work to build a coalition, whether it be in this place or whether it be on the streets, in the town halls, and in our community. We want to build a movement—the type of environmental movement that has been warning, as the Greens have, for decades about what we are facing—of environmentalists, working people and young people, whose futures are being stolen from them by the major parties and the big, polluting corporations. We will build a coalition that will change the way we do business in the country. It will be a coalition, a movement, that is built by people who are ready to embrace a clean, green, sustainable future based on respect for nature and based on respect for our climate. That, of course, means renewable energy. It means advanced manufacturing in this country. It means universal services in this country, so that everyone gets a fair go at the opportunities in life. And it means environmental restoration, where we repair denuded, devastated landscapes with new ecosystems and new habitats for animals. We stand ready to play a leadership role in the building of that movement and its journey into the future.

The impact of these fires is so difficult to comprehend—the lives lost, the ecosystems devastated, the communities destroyed, and the animals, so many of which died in utter agony and so many of which are still starving in our denuded landscapes. We can't let this chance pass us by. We have to do business differently. We need a model of doing business that will respect nature and respect our climate. It's a model that we need to work on together constructively and collaboratively, both in this place and in our communities, to deliver for not only the people of Australia but the people of the world.