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

Tragically, what we have today is the third condolence motion on bushfires that the Senate has done in four months. These bushfires have been burning along the eastern half of this country the whole time, right through the period of condolence motion after condolence motion, and they continue to burn still. That's because these fires have no precedent. Let me just say that, despite what the Prime Minister says, this is not the new normal, because we don't know what the new normal looks like. Things may indeed get worse than we are experiencing right now. These fires are simply the beginning of what a climate disaster looks like if we continue on the path that we're on, if we continue with the mining and burning of coal, oil and gas.

Australians have endured a horrific summer. We've had megafires, hailstorms and flash flooding. We've had smoke blanketing our cities for days, ranking Australian cities among those with the worst air quality in the world. We still don't know what the long-term impact of that will be. We've seen grassfires, drought and dust storms, all coexisting. It's important to understand that the crisis we have confronted over the summer comes from one degree of warming, and yet all of the science tells us that, if we continue on the path that we're on, we are on track for three degrees or more. Who knows what 'normal' looks like under those conditions? It is absolutely critical now that, if we are to avert the trajectory we are on and if we're going to restrict the rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees or less, we have to stand up to the coal, oil and gas industries—industries that continue to bankroll our political parties and saturate our social media feeds. One degree of warming has given us this deep, profound drought. This drought has contributed to megafires burning a record 11 million hectares and counting. Thirty-three lives have been lost, and six of those were volunteer firefighters.

The megafires have been so intense that they created their own storm clouds, such as the one that flipped an eight-tonne truck, killing volunteer Samuel McPaul. Mr McPaul was just 28 years old and he's survived by a wife who's expecting their first child in May. Geoffrey Keaton, deputy captain of the Horsley Park volunteer fire brigade, is survived by his fiancee and son and was 32 years old. Andrew O'Dwyer, 36, is survived by his wife and daughter. And let's not forget the three US support crew who tragically died when their air tanker crashed in Cooma. They came here to help us and they lost their lives doing it.

We are witnessing an ecological catastrophe. A billion animals—I'll say that again: one billion animals—perished, pushing species to the brink of extinction. Countless more have been injured with nowhere to go. Habitat has been destroyed. We've seen the devastating loss of property, with 3,000 family homes gone. It is destruction, it is carnage and it has wrought so much grief, so much sadness and so much trauma on the Australian people.

We offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who have died in these tragic bushfires currently raging across Australia—to all of those who have lost their family, their friends, their homes or their livelihoods. But condolences are not enough. Sympathy is not enough. Our thoughts are not enough. The responsibility we have in this place is to ensure that we do everything we can to prevent this from happening. There is one thing that we can do to help prevent this from happening, and that is to get pollution down and to get it down quickly.

We have so much power as a federal parliament to protect Australians from the ravages of climate change. The choice is up to us. We can choose the future for those families who live in regional communities and are exposed to this danger each and every day. But that requires some honesty. It requires accepting the science. It requires an acknowledgment that we are turbocharging these catastrophic fires through the burning of coal, oil and gas. We can keep on carrying on as we have, but we will be condemning so many more to the fate of the 33 people tragically killed, the billions of animals lost and the group of volunteers who have put their lives on the line and who are traumatised and exhausted.

This is not a surprise. This was predicted. Unprecedented does not mean unforeseen. Climate scientists and economists have told us precisely what was coming, and it has arrived. What was in the background is now in the foreground. We've transformed our oceans and atmosphere, and that in turn is transforming how we live our lives in Australia. The climate emergency touches everything: our mental health, our physical health, our ecosystems. It touches the meaningful and sacred sites of our First Nations peoples. It impacts on our economy. This climate emergency has cost up to $103 billion in lost private and public property. It's touched the very fabric of who we are as Australians.

The climate emergency affects us at some of the most basic levels. It affects our holiday plans with our families, which of course means it affects tourism income for regions who depend on it. It has an impact on those people who put their lives on the line, our firefighters, and their partners, who have to hope when they kiss their partners goodbye that they'll return home safely. It affects our kids. Schoolchildren are anxious. They can see things changing around them. They can see the tragedy wrought in their local communities. These are scars that will cut deep and that will be with these kids forever. So it's up to us in this place to decide whether we're going to allow these risks to escalate, to increase, or whether we in this place fulfil our responsibility, our primary responsibility, to keep people safe.

For too long, we have been confronted with the false choice that to act on the climate crisis is to compromise our standard of living. But we know that reducing pollution is critical to not just maintaining but improving the standard of living that Australians right around the country enjoy. We have to accept the uncomfortable truth that our climate crisis has been a driving force behind these tragic fires. What is so disappointing is that the motion we're speaking to refuses to even acknowledge that climate change has turbocharged these fires and ravaged our country.

It is utterly shameful that with these fires still burning the Prime Minister has been out there with his chequebook using money to bribe states to open up toxic gas fields, frack the Pilliga Forest and threaten what little groundwater is left in this drought-stricken part of the country. Gas is a fossil fuel. The extraction, transport and combustion of gas drives up pollution. Gas is part of the problem, not the solution. We cannot continue to extract gas and mine coal and to burn those resources and believe that somehow we aren't increasing the risk of fires across Australia.

What the government's actions are saying right now is that this government would rather see these natural disasters getting more intense and more frequent than to see the profits of some of the biggest donors to their political party dry up. If fires of this unprecedented scale aren't a wake-up call and if this isn't a moment of truth for the Prime Minister and this government then what will be? If an extinction crisis that has wiped out the habitat of some of our most threatened plants and animals isn't enough then what will be? If a billion plants and animals lost and gone, some of them forever, isn't a wake-up call then what will be? If the deaths of 33 people, many of them putting their lives on the line to fight these fires, aren't a wake-up call then what will be? We can't keep burying our heads in the sand.

The good news right now is that people across the country understand the scale of the crisis we're in and understand the scale of the threat before us. They are coming together like never before, demanding action on the climate crisis. We won't accept that these fires are the new normal and simply adapt and do nothing about increasing pollution, because whatever we adapt to won't be the new normal; it will be surpassed as the climate system spirals further out of control.

I don't want to see another condolence motion delivered in a few months time. I don't want to see us grieving after another summer where people have died. I want us to take advantage of the opportunities that come with transitioning away from polluting energy sources like coal, oil and gas and to embrace the billions of dollars of investment and the hundreds of thousands of new jobs that will come with the renewable energy revolution. It is up to us right now. We have the power to decide. We must take action on the climate crisis if we are to ensure that Australians are safe. It is absolutely critical that, in this moment of truth, the Prime Minister understands what he needs to do.