Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Climate Change Bill 2022. This is a bill that delivers on the government's commitment to restore national leadership on climate change. It provides the certainty and confidence needed to drive the transition to net zero by 2050. A decade has been squandered in ignoring the urgency of the task before us. But now, more than ever before, there is no time to be lost in facing the reality of climate change and how it can devastate our lives.

As Special Envoy for Disaster Recovery, I've been meeting communities who have been directly affected by climate change. I have listened to what they've had to say. We know that because of climate change natural hazards—floods, bushfires, violent storms and cyclones— will become more frequent and more severe. All too often, the outcome of these natural hazards is a humanitarian disaster. If we apply real leadership to the disaster recovery task and listen to the communities affected, this doesn't always have to be the case. There is an alternative.

Disaster recovery not only involves cleaning up for days, weeks and months afterwards; it also means working alongside communities to reduce their future disaster risk through preparedness and mitigation. In the six weeks since being appointed to the special envoy role I've visited communities in the Bega Valley in southern New South Wales, the Lockyer Valley in Queensland, the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, Western Sydney and the Northern Rivers region of northern New South Wales. In Cobargo, in the Bega Valley, last week I met locals including Zena Armstrong. Zena and others in her community have worked tirelessly since Cobargo was knocked sideways by the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. Roads, bridges and other infrastructure were destroyed. Six people, unfortunately, lost their lives, and 300,000 hectares were wiped out. All this happened in a community of just 2,200 people. Yet Cobargo is slowly pulling itself back together.

Zena told me that it helps to have a good stock of social capital before disaster hits. By 'social capital' she means a community's capacity to face immense hazards and overcome disaster, however adverse the circumstances are. This is a capacity derived from community cohesion and an ability to adapt to quickly changing circumstances. Zena went on to say that there is also the challenge of legitimatising unexpected leadership at times of crisis and balancing the wide range of community needs that arise.

Last week I was in Ballina, Lismore, Huonbrook and Mullumbimby in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. I visited Cabbage Tree Island and an Aboriginal community in Ballina that was devastated by this year's floods. Chris Binge, CEO of the Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council, gave me a tour of the island, which, until the events of March, was a thriving community of 27 homes. Now it's like a ghost town. Its residents have been relocated for safety reasons to nearby Wardell while plans for the community's future are developed. Mr Binge said: 'We are the biggest landholders in the Ballina Shire area, but we have struggled until now to get real attention. If we were a white corporation, people would be knocking down our doors to deal with us.' I hear your plea, Chris.

Climate change and therefore disaster recovery is an area where the national interests, not political pointscoring, must take the lead. Last week in Lismore I announced a $30 million return to business recovery grant. It was a perfect example of the bipartisan way in which we must go about disaster recovery. To announce the program I was joined not only by the state member for Lismore, Janelle Saffin—a good friend of mine—but also by the Nationals member for Page, Kevin Hogan, and the Lismore mayor, Steve Krieg. Steve is both an Independent councillor and a business owner in the CBD. Steve spoke for his fellow business owners when he welcomed the commercial landlords grant, saying it would take a great deal of pressure off businesses, like his, that are struggling to get on their feet.

Even as disaster recovery must be a bipartisan affair, that does not mean that improvements on previous approaches can't be made. Previous funding arrangements have seen the vast majority of disaster funding going to immediate recovery rather than to mitigation. That is even though the evidence from the US National Institute of Building Sciences shows that for every one dollar spent on mitigation six dollars are saved in recovery. Disaster costs $38 billion annually, according to a 2021 Deloitte report. The same report calculates that by 2060, without any changes to our approach, disasters will cost the economy $94 billion a year.

We need to strengthen significantly our capacity to cope with disaster. That means we need to do more than just respond when disasters hit. The Albanese government's Disaster Ready Fund will enable us to spend $200 million each year to change how individuals, communities and industry think about and act on disaster risk—in other words, increasing strength. The Disaster Ready Fund will replace the former government's $4.8 billion Emergency Response Fund, which failed to complete any mitigation projects in the lead up to the February and March floods. In the ERF's three years, it did not complete a single mitigation project or release a cent in recovery funding. Instead, it earned the government more than $800 million in interest, taking the total of the fund to nearly $5 billion, with nothing to show for it.

During my recent visit to Cobargo and Quaama in the Bega Valley, I heard from local women Danielle Murphy and Christina Walters about how the previous Emergency Response Fund did not focus adequately on community needs for rebuilding after the Black Summer bushfires. Danielle said 'withdrawal of supports which never realised their full potential and the herd mentality of recovery' were her concerns. While in Bega last week, I met with Arthur Rorris, the secretary of the South Coast Labour Council. Arthur has this week pulled together the very successful Union Towns Australia Conference in Wollongong, which directly addresses the important role of community in withstanding disaster. I also had an extensive briefing from Leanne Atkinson, the acting CEO of the Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council. Leanne told me the of importance of having a local recovery agency on the ground and, 'where they can, remain nimble, which enables them to respond to the everchanging needs of the community. The arms-length Sydney- or Canberra-centric approach simply does not work'.

Our focus on investment in mitigation projects will help reduce some of the burdens on taxpayers' funds that would otherwise have been incurred. Addressing vulnerability and the root causes of disasters is key to managing systematic risk, risk that will increase as the effects of climate change mount. Repairing damaged and destroyed infrastructure is helpful, and may protect some in the short term, but alone it will never be enough to protect everyone or to ensure Australia's prosperity. Rather, inclusive and collective disaster-risk-reduction plans, efforts and actions are key to building communities and our response.