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

Through you, Acting Deputy President—a climate sceptic, a climate denier and a denier of science. I thought previous Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull actually delivered a fantastic rebuttal to The Australian on Q&A a few weeks ago. He said: 'If you deny climate, it's like denying physics. Did you fly here in an aeroplane? Do you understand physics?' We're talking about the same fundamental concepts, yet these people have turned climate into a matter of identity, as Mr Turnbull so rightly pointed out. They've turned it into a matter of ideology and identity, but it's actually about physics and science. It really is appalling that in this day and age we're having these political debates when the community and the rest of the world is moving on and recognising the fact that our planet is warming and that that is having an impact on us and putting us at risk.

To get back to the debate, climate change, global warming, is the biggest threat to our national security. I personally believe that the defence forces have a huge role to play in this country and in our region, whether it's providing aid, assistance or expertise on so many different levels. Going back three or four years, I initiated a Senate inquiry. The Greens didn't chair it, but we sat in on it through Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, and we actually looked at this. We looked at the preparedness of the Australian Defence Force for climate change and for a climate emergency. We took evidence from experts all around the country, who talked about the threat climate change poses. At a minimum, you got out of these people—and some of these people Senator Molan would know very well—that they all recognised climate change as a threat multiplier. Some went a lot further than that and were prepared to say it actually is the biggest threat to our national security. So I support a more active use of the defence forces, and I've got to say, like a lot of Australians I felt very proud seeing our Navy evacuating Australians off beaches in January this year. While I was down the coast at Bicheno, we had ash falling on our heads as we were walking along the beach on New Year's Day. We were also worried about fires on the east coast of Tasmania, and everybody was glued to what was going on just here on the South Coast of New South Wales, and all up and down the coast in the months preceding. The fact that we had to use our armed forces to evacuate Australian civilians off beaches was quite extraordinary. I recognise the role the armed forces have played over the climate emergency we've seen this summer, and it will only get worse. It is not going to get better. If the Bureau of Meteorology is telling us that under current business-as-usual scenarios we are on a three to four degree warming trajectory by the end of this century, we're in really serious strife. Sadly, Senator Molan, you and I probably won't be around when the worst effects of this are being felt by our children and our grandchildren, but we're going to leave them that legacy.

The Greens support a much more active role for the Australian defence forces in terms of realigning their training, their capabilities, their procurement and a whole range of things, like potentially looking at remote area firefighting like we see with the New Zealand defence forces. We want to see the Australian government, as we debated in here last week, buy our own water bomber fleet. I did dare suggest that perhaps the Air Force, seeing as we've got very good pilots, might consider flying those aircraft as well if we were going to buy them, but it could just as easily be given to state emergency services. But either way, I think this is a discussion we should be having at a national level. We call our defence forces 'defence' forces for a reason, but it seems that they are 'offence' forces. They spend all their time—and all their procurement is based around—fighting in foreign theatres of war, endless wars, for what strategic political objective I don't know, when we clearly have a clear and present danger here in Australia and in our region, and a need to employ our service personnel to protect Australians and to protect our region.

Saying that, we've got to be extremely careful that we get the balance right in how we legislate that and what kinds of powers we give the government to call out our defence forces. As has been outlined here tonight by my colleague Senator Steele-John, who's participated in this inquiry and has raised a number of significant issues that the Greens want to see amended, if we don't get that balance right then we risk unintended consequences in the future. And we certainly risk undermining public confidence in the rollout of our defence forces in the future.

I wanted to put that on the table. I think this is a really important discussion. I commend the government for their increased rollout of the defence forces over summer. I was very proud of what they achieved, Senator Reynolds. However, we don't believe you've got the balance right here. But this is a conversation we need to continue to have. We're going into committee stage, so we will talk in more detail on our amendments then.