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

I was reflecting on the fact that it was actually nine years ago this week that I got preselected to replace Dr Bob Brown in this place. I came into parliament as a young senator who had been a campaigner on marine conservation, who had been a campaigner on climate change. I taught the economics of tackling climate change at the university. This is something I thought deeply about. But I was reflecting on the fact that, if you had told me then what I know now, what I have seen in the last nine years, the changes to this planet, to our oceans, to our coastlines, to our country—which I have observed and which have been put into the scientific literature—I wouldn't have believed it. I simply couldn't have fathomed the magnitude of how much things have tipped in our climate in the last nine years. At James Cook University this week some of the most respected coral scientists in the world collaborated and said that we've got the briefest of windows to take radical action on climate change, or by 2050, they estimate, 94 per cent of the world's coral reefs will be disappearing. In the last five years alone, we've lost half the coral cover on the world's single biggest organism, the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists didn't predict it was possible to even have back-to-back bleachings, mass coral bleachings, until 2050, but we've had three in the last five years and six in the last 20 years. They didn't happen until 1998. There were none recorded in history until 1998. My home state of Tasmania—and your home state, Acting Deputy President—has recorded the biggest marine heat wave in human history off our coastlines. We've lost our giant kelp forests.

I'm getting sick and tired of talking about it in this place, trying to bring it to the attention of the people opposite the chamber and those out there that deny the changes to our climate. It's not just a Greens problem or an environmental problem; it is an economic problem as much as anything else. First and foremost, it is a political problem because it is a political failure that has allowed this to happen. On my car ride in this morning I saw the Extinction Rebellion protesting out the front here with a truck. They had a sign saying, 'If we do nothing, we risk everything.' I can say 100 per cent, with no doubt in my heart, that we do risk everything in our oceans if we don't act now. We risk everything. We risk our fisheries. We risk our coastal communities. We will be bringing up kids who will not see what we have seen while we've been alive. Funnily enough, after I was pre-selected, I wanted to have a holiday before I started in the Senate. I took my kids snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in 2012. It's unrecognisable now. We don't understand the impacts it's having on our ecosystems. That reef system is connected to the forests and it's connected to the climate and the weather in those areas. Everything is interconnected and it is changing so rapidly.

David Attenborough, reflecting on his life on this planet and how we tackle the climate emergency, made the comment, 'We cannot be radical enough.' Was there any radical action in this budget? No. Was there any action on climate change in this budget? In the face of this mounting evidence, was there any action at all? Not a thing, except more money for fossil fuel companies, more money for oil and gas projects, more money for coal-fired power stations, more subsidies for big polluters. It's got to stop. We have to change and we have to act. I'm getting fed up with this, and I know so many Australians are getting fed up with this. Where is the action? This is the biggest challenge we face as a nation and as a planet, and there is nothing in this budget at all to tackle it. Nothing. Why? We have to act. If my party and my colleagues are the only ones in this place that continue to bang the drum, well, so be it. We are not going away. There is a federal election, and we will deal with it then.