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

Flying into Canberra yesterday from Melbourne, from the south, and looking across to Kosciuszko, to Lake Jindabyne and to the coast was a haunting thing for me. Although in three of the last six summers Tasmania has been devastated by unprecedented fires, I wasn't prepared for what I saw flying in that aeroplane yesterday. I hope that every politician coming into this place witnessed what I saw yesterday: the true extent of these bushfires.

I know it's been a very difficult summer for people here in Canberra, as it has been for many communities around this country. I wholeheartedly support the 10 points in this key motion today. I probably speak on behalf of every senator and every MP who has been on summer break when I say that not a day has gone by when I haven't thought about what's been going on around the country. Indeed, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it multiple times during the day. It is very hard to ignore.

As we are public figures, decision-makers, role models and leaders in our community, of course people look up to us. I'm not being political here at all, but the well-deserved criticism of our Prime Minister, our commander-in-chief, for going away on holiday during this time of crisis put us all under the same microscope as politicians and as decision-makers. I'm absolutely committed to making sure that, while we recognise in this condolence motion today the terrible suffering, the tragedy and the catastrophic impact on our communities, on our environment and on our economy, we go beyond these words as quickly as possible and take action.

I note the last two points of this motion—that the parliament:

(i) commits itself to learning any lessons from this fire season; and

(j) pledges the full support of the Australian Parliament to assist affected areas to recover and rebuild.

I would hope that learning any lessons from this fire season also means we're going to act on what we have learnt. So I'd like to start with the call for a royal commission, for a full independent inquiry into this catastrophic fire season—and, when I talk about this fire season, I'm going back to winter last year. We had fires burning in the middle of winter in this country, which is unprecedented. We had fires on the beach in September last year on the Sunshine Coast in places like Peregian Springs. Of course, we had the fires in November and the debates in here in December.

I called the Leader of the Greens at the time, Senator Di Natale, on New Year's Eve. I was in Melbourne Airport trying to get home and I witnessed in Melbourne a furnace of 45 degrees and 100-kilometre winds and news of communities being evacuated from beaches. I said to Richard: 'This is the crisis of our time, mate. This is really bad. This is going to be something that defines us and our time in this place.' Of course, the images that came out of those communities affected by these fires will haunt me for a long time, as I'm sure they will for those who are directly impacted. It's incumbent on us to make sure we do everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen again.

We called for a royal commission, an independent inquiry, early in the New Year, because you can't have a catastrophe of this scale without an inquiry. Having been through campaigning for a royal commission previously for the banking royal commission, I know the terms of reference are going to be critical to the success of this inquiry. They need to be as broad as possible. They need to be collaborative. I urge the Prime Minister and this government to work with all political parties and to make sure those terms of reference are right. There is no way that we can get this wrong. We need to be collaborative with communities. We need to have a fully independent commissioner and the time and resources to get to the bottom of this. If we are going to learn the lessons which are set out in this condolence motion we're debating today, we have to have a full inquiry into the mistakes that were made, the advice that was ignored, what worked well and—one thing that I continually get asked about in relation to this inquiry—why all the recommendations from previous inquiries weren't implemented. A number of them were, from my brief look at this, but I think it's really important that any royal commission does look—as the banking royal commission did—at previous inquiries and why some recommendations weren't implemented and what the barriers were to the implementation of those recommendations. Were they financial? Were they political? Were they scientific? The No. 1 bit of feedback I've got back from the community is they're very sceptical about any inquiry, which makes me a bit sad, because that's actually our job in here: to do the policy work, to get the detail, and get it done in a non-political environment. This has to be taken away from politics.

I dare anyone to try to whitewash this inquiry, because the emotion is very raw. Thousands of people have had their lives turned upside down by this. This must be a full, independent inquiry that gets to the bottom of this so we can actually get recommendations. That is not an excuse for them to take no action while that inquiry is underway. There are things that parliament can do to act now. While I'm sure the Australian people are happy that we're in here today debating a condolence motion, I can tell you that they are so sceptical of us—every single one of us. They are so sceptical of their politicians. I actually can't think of anything sadder than that—that we've got to the point in this country where they don't believe that we're genuine when we get up in here and talk about the grief and what we need to do about it and how we need to avoid this happening again.

There are a couple of other points I want to make in my remaining time. During this break, I made the mistake of looking at my social media regularly—my Facebook and Instagram pages and my Twitter account. I've seen a lot of misinformation campaigns around fires before—every Greens MP does—but I have never seen anything like what I witnessed this summer with the misinformation campaign that somehow the Greens or greenies or conservationists were responsible for this tragedy. It was well-resourced. It was well-organised. There were bot armies on all social media pages spreading misinformation—downright lies. We had the Murdoch press going into overdrive, doing exactly the same thing. It was shameful, absolutely shameful. There have been protests outside their office in the last week. It's okay to lie in the gutter when you're with the Murdoch press.

I'm sorry, but this has to be raised today. If we are going to implement the points in this motion and learn from our mistakes—have an open and transparent inquiry, take this away from politics, listen to the experts and listen to the science—we need to understand that this kind of misinformation campaign, which is deliberately designed to deflect blame from those responsible for failures to adequately resource fire services and for not acting on climate change after decades of warning, and which is deliberately designed to demonise the Greens and others, is only going to be an impediment to action, to getting anything done.

I am going to mention how disappointed I have been with my Tasmanian Liberal colleague Senator Abetz, who just last week wrote an op-ed in The Mercury, repeating the same old lies and misinformation, the same old trash, about the Greens being responsible for these fires. This op-ed deliberately conflated a policy that we have to oppose regeneration burns in industrial forestry, which is designed to grow plantation forests, and our policy supporting strategic and scientifically based fuel-reduction burns, which has been Greens policy since I have been a member of the party—over a decade. It was deliberately conflating the two in order to confuse people. It's the same old gutter politics. It is the lowest form of politics and dishonesty to spread misinformation like that in a time of crisis. It is the lowest form of politics. I would like Senator Abetz to come into this chamber and apologise for the lies that he has spread—and I know he's been saying the same thing to people who have written to him, asking him to act on a royal commission and on climate change. That's all I'll say about this for now, but I am not going to let this go.

This country is getting hotter and drier; no-one can doubt that, surely. I know there are some people in this place who doubt that it's anthropogenic—that it's man made. That really saddens me, because while you're in denial you're never going to act. I note that Malcolm Turnbull recently talked about the 'terrorists' within his own party. I hate the use of that word, and I've said that several times in this chamber, because it's always misused and it's very strong language. But he's talked about the 'terrorists' within the Liberal Party who have done everything they can to tear down any form of climate action.

It's just not going to cut it with the Australian people anymore. When I spoke to Senator Di Natale on New Year's Eve, I knew this was going to be a turning point for this country—for the people I've seen out there who have been affected, or know people who have been affected, by fires in their communities or who have just been so gutted by what they've seen in the media, with the loss of wildlife and biodiversity.

In my own movement, the very first forest protest in this country—one might even say the 'morning of the earth' moment for the green movement, was in the Nightcap forests, Terania Creek, which I know Senator Ayres referred to in his speech. These areas were saved for future generations. The World Heritage forests in Tasmania have been saved for future generations. The biggest risk they now face is fire from climate change, and an increasingly dry climate. My movement recognises that; the community recognise that. But they don't want to see us fighting. They don't want to see us playing gutter politics. They want to see us coming together as a parliament, putting aside any political differences and acting on this emergency, this crisis, that we have found ourselves in.

If we don't reduce emissions—and quickly—and take the strongest possible action, we are going to find ourselves in exactly the same situation. To those who think that the Greens haven't been taking this seriously: Senator McKim and I initiated a big Senate inquiry, following the 2016 fires in Tasmania, that heard from hundreds of witnesses and made very good recommendations on the kinds of resourcing and processes that needed to be acted on to give us the best possible chance.

We initiated another inquiry, in 2017, on the role of the ADF acting on climate change. It looked at scenarios like we have just seen. I'm glad the ADF was mobilised. We have been talking about this now for a number of years, but no-one has taken it seriously. Those recommendations have never been acted on. They're now being quoted in media articles, and I'm glad about that and I hope that people will see that all of us in this chamber have a contribution to make.

I would urge all senators—while we're debating this condolence motion today, while we're respecting this tragedy, and while we're honouring the suffering and the sacrifice of those who died and those who suffered—that the greatest honour we can bestow on these communities and these people is to make sure this doesn't happen again, and to put aside any political differences and come together and act. Act on properly resourcing our emergency services. Act on looking at the role of the Commonwealth and how it coordinates with the states. But, most importantly, act on climate change. Listen to the experts; listen to the science. A government's No. 1 job is to protect its citizens. That's its most important job. And, by 'government', I mean not just this government but previous governments. We've failed this summer, and we absolutely cannot afford to fail again.