Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Notwithstanding its origins up the back with the tinfoil hat brigade, Labor was happy to support this order for production of documents, because it should be very easy to satisfy. The evidence for human induced climate change is vast, well substantiated and detailed. I believe in climate change, and so do my colleagues. We believe in it because tens of thousands of qualified scientists over decades have measured it and experimented and modelled it. Climate change is real. We should not have to say that in 2020, but there it is. Climate change is real. If there's not enough empirical evidence out there for you, the problem isn't with the evidence. Evidence doesn't stop being evidence and it doesn't stop being empirical just because you disagree with it or don't like what it tells you.

There is a climate conspiracy, but it is not a conspiracy by the tens of thousands of scientists who have contributed to our current understanding. It is a conspiracy by climate denialists to muddy the waters of what is now a very clear scientific consensus. Back in 1995 a Republican strategist, Frank Luntz, was encouraging Republican members to challenge the science. He suggested you do this 'by recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view'. Ten years later he was still at it, with a 2001 memo that said: 'The scientific debate is closing but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science. You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.' He's not the only one to attack the science for political reasons. The flood of misinformation has not abated in the years since. International organisations like the Heartland Institute actively promote false or misleading information about climate change.

We cannot allow the debate about climate change in this country to be derailed by misinformation in the way that it has been in the United States and elsewhere. We have known about the threat of climate change for decades, and the science has only got more certain over time. The truth is that Australians and Australia are uniquely vulnerable to climate change. It places us at risk of longer and deeper droughts, more destructive cyclones and other weather events and, as we saw over the summer, more horrific fire seasons. In 2018 a heatwave saw fruit bats drop dead from the sky. In 2019 heat and drought saw massive fish kills along Australia's waterways. 2020 started with fires that have destroyed up to 80 per cent of our koalas' natural habitats, destroyed thousands of homes and tragically seen too many lives lost. These fires were described as unusual, extraordinary and unprecedented.

This is not business as usual, and yet the government continues to behave as though it couldn't care less. One possible benefit of collating these documents for Senator Roberts may have been that the government would have had the opportunity to reacquaint itself with some of the basic facts. However, their performance over the last few days suggests that, like One Nation, they are full to the gills with climate deniers.

I have come to the sad conclusion that this government will never take significant action on climate change. They are divided down the middle with downright deniers of the science of climate change, and they seem to dictate the government agenda and there appears to be nothing capable of shifting them. Would the environmental burden change things, perhaps, after a summer in which 33 people lost their lives and 3,000 homes were destroyed? The government's policy remains non-existent. Would the economic burden change things?

According to recent research from the University of Melbourne, the cost to Australia of not delivering on the goal of the Paris Agreement, a goal that requires net zero emissions by 2050, is a staggering $2.7 trillion. Yet there's been nothing, no meaningful climate response, from government. Would calls from stakeholders shift this government? Everyone from the National Farmers Federation to the Business Council of Australia is calling for action. No. The truth is this: for a decade, a rump of conservatives in the coalition have blocked every attempt to move the country forward, and they still hold the whip hand—like newly-appointed Minister Keith Pitt, the new minister for resources, who claimed solar panels and lithium batteries could turn out to be this generation's asbestos; former deputy Nationals leader Senator Matt Canavan calling renewables the dole bludgers of the energy system, a phrase distasteful for more than one reason; or Senator Jim Molan, who recently told our national broadcaster that he's not relying on evidence in forming view about climate change. Is there any hope that this government will act? Sadly, I have concluded, no.

Labor will act. I was proud to see the opposition leader on Friday announce our commitment to a net zero target by 2050. Our target is what the world—Australia included—agreed to in Paris. Whether the Morrison government accepts this or not, this goal is fast becoming the reality. Australia has lost 10 years to baseless fear campaigns against climate action and we cannot afford to lose another 10.