Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the tabling of the Human rights scrutiny report: Report 15 of 2020 of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. I have some short remarks on the report, particularly the committee's decision to provide no comment on the human rights compatibility of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Grid Reliability Fund) Bill 2020. I understand very well that the committee does not consider issues of public policy only on the black-letter law.

As a human rights campaigner my whole life, I am very proud to sit on this committee. It's time that this parliament has an honest conversation about centring human rights in everything we do. Personally, I believe that climate change is a human rights issue. I want to repeat that. I understand that the committee considers only the black-letter human rights law and not social policy, but it's time that changed. Climate change is a human rights issue, and I thank the Environmental Defenders Office for their staunch defence of human rights in the courts, in the community and to this committee. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said:

Climate change is a reality that now affects every region of the world … Storms are rising and tides could submerge entire island nations and coastal cities. Fires rage through our forests, and the ice is melting. We are burning up our future—literally.

Torres Strait Islander mob are some of the first in the world being impacted by climate change. Their rights to health, culture and life itself are being damaged by climate change. Proud Torres Strait Islander man Yessie Mosby has told the ABC that he scours the beach for the remains of his great-grandmother after huge tides flooded graves on Masig Island. He said:

My fear is that her skull has been squashed, smashed by the driftwood.

He continued:

Our way of living, our culture, our tradition has been violated.

How is this not a critical human rights issue? How do climate change and this government's inaction not contravene the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the UNDRIP? This committee needs to be able to consider issues like this and to hear the voices of grassroots mob as well as advocacy organisations like the Environmental Defenders Office. The human rights committee is too important to the work of this parliament for it to become a rubber stamp machine. The committee should be able to consider matters of public policy, and it must be able to consider the UNDRIP, not as a footnote but as a central part of its work. The UNDRIP is the most comprehensive international instrument on the rights of indigenous peoples. It establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity and wellbeing of the indigenous peoples of the world. I call on the government to do the right thing and modify the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 so that the committee can properly consider UNDRIP and also properly consider urgent matters of public policy like climate change. We need to give the committee the powers it needs to properly do its work.

I once again reiterate my thanks to the committee secretariat for their fantastic work and also to the chairperson. I also thank my colleagues Senator Dodson and Mr Perrett, the member for Moreton, for their work on the committee. Let's do the right thing: let's centre human rights into everything we do, particularly in the middle of a climate emergency. Our survival depends on it.

Question agreed to.