Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief contribution on the suspension of standing orders today. The government will not be supporting the suspension, but I do want to be clear that we think the issue of climate change is real and requires serious action. To start where Senator Waters finished, and to quote her, we have a chance to make a difference. Well, the government supports that, and we agree that we do have a chance to make a difference, and the most pressing opportunity we have to do that is to pass the safeguard legislation that will be coming before the parliament in the next week.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which was released last night, makes the case for urgent action and confirms what we already know. It puts in pretty stark terms that there is a rapidly closing window for transformative climate action, both here and around the world, and it shows that global warming has increased at an unprecedented rate over the past decade, resulting in more frequent and severe droughts and cyclones. Every region in the world is expected to face increasing risks from climate change by the 2030s. It's already at our door, and this report unfortunately just confirms yet again the wasted decade under the Liberal and Nationals governments, when they refused to accept the science, refused to take action when they were in a position to do so, and were more preoccupied with fighting each other, particularly on climate and energy policy, than with doing their job. And that's having real consequences for our nation, our region and our world.

Australians already know that they are being impacted by catastrophic climate change—severe flooding, drought, mega fires, low air quality from those fires. Every Australian has felt the ferocious effects of a warming planet, so we all know that climate change is real. Well, most of us in this chamber know that climate change is real. It is here and it's starting to have an impact. It would be great if this fortnight, instead of having suspension motions and things like that, we could actually pass the legislation that is going to give us the opportunity to start doing the work that should have been happening for years but hasn't been happening.

I accept that not everybody agrees with the detail of the design, that it is not perfect in everyone's sense, but it is a start to make a difference. If we genuinely want to make a difference, we have to start somewhere. We can't have those who want more action on climate change and those who want no action on climate change determining that nothing happens. I mean, that is the risk that we face here. We on this side have the policy design and we will continue to work with anyone in this chamber who wants to make a difference, who wants to start reducing emissions through the safeguard magnetism and through the regulation that will come down the road, and actually start doing that. That is what needs to be happening.

No four- or 10-hour debates on the IPCC report will actually do what passing the legislation that will come before this parliament will start to do if it gets the support of this chamber. The counterfactual is that it doesn't pass, that we don't reform the safeguard mechanism and that we aren't able to reduce emissions in the way that the safeguard mechanism is designed. That is the counterfactual of this chamber not supporting that legislation, that we are struck again with nothing happening. So we on this side do think that we should be progressing the most obvious, the most pressing legislation that is actually before this parliament. That will make a difference, and we can work together to do it.

We can't let those opposite, who sit there and say they support net zero by 2050—well, you used to support that anyway and you used to support the safeguard mechanism and you want to see change—sit there and block everything. The 'no-alition'—who block absolutely everything in this chamber. You are setting yourselves up to be the most obstructionist opposition in recent times—absolutely. The way you are not involving yourselves in legislation, what are you getting paid for? You come here and you don't even play yourselves into the discussions because it is the straight-up no. That's what the people who support you are getting out of this. They are getting bodies who sit in this chamber who don't participate, who don't involve themselves and who don't negotiate, and that is what has led to this policy failure, or the effect of—