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

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

A marine heatwave that triggered mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef has devastated significant World Heritage habitat and wildlife, impacted communities and the economy, and should be treated like other extreme weather events and declared a national emergency under the National Emergency Declaration Act 2020 and Labor should stop opening coal and gas mines, which will make the climate crisis worse.

On 16 April, nearly a month ago, the Prime Minister flew into Gladstone and stood next to the Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, celebrating the thousandth shipment of LNG cargo across the Great Barrier Reef. What was extraordinary about this was that it was exactly one day after NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, out of the US, had announced the fourth and biggest mass coral bleaching in our planet's history. It was also significant that the Prime Minister was at Gladstone because, on that very day, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority were about to release their aerial surveys of the bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, which was absolutely devastating.

I visited Gladstone not long after and went out to Heron Island with scientists to see and bear witness myself to what had happened on the Great Barrier Reef, and it struck me as I was leaving on the ferry—our little boat navigating its way through 40 coal ships on our way to a Barrier Reef fighting for its life—that the Prime Minister that day, when he stood in Gladstone, didn't mention coral bleaching and didn't mention what was happening just kilometres off the coast where he was standing with the resources minister, spruiking the exact cause of the decline of the Great Barrier Reef.

It got me thinking: how can we elevate this issue so that Australians understand the seriousness of what is happening not just on our reefs and not just on the Barrier Reef but on temperate reefs off my coastline and on coral reefs all around the world? I wondered why this marine heatwave, which is caused by warming oceans and caused by the burning of fossil fuels and rising emissions, hasn't been declared a national emergency. If this were a bushfire burning for thousands of kilometres along the Queensland coast, destroying half the World Heritage habitat on that coast—with the impacts on the creatures that rely on that habitat—and causing devastation to local communities and businesses, this would have been declared a national emergency.

I encourage senators to go to the National Emergency Declaration Act 2020, where it clearly talks about this being an important tool to outline key matters of national environment significance—where 'the emergency has caused, is causing or is likely to cause nationally significant harm in Australia'. If you go to the definitions of 'nationally significant harm', it clearly says 'harm to the life or health of animals or plants', and part (iv) is 'harm to the environment'.

I have no doubt, after what I saw and from the reports that have come in from scientists on the Great Barrier Reef, that this will be the biggest and most devastating mass coral bleaching and mortality event for corals that we have seen on the reef, and it will only get worse. How can this not be a national emergency? The Greens want this declared a national emergency; we have written to the Prime Minister asking him to instruct the Governor-General to do so. And the reason is simple. If Australians don't know what they're about to lose and are losing, they won't fight for it and they won't vote for it. From what I've seen in this place from the respective governments, including this government, they're doing pretty much everything they can to cover up the seriousness of this crisis, of this national emergency, including on the world stage at the World Heritage UNESCO in-danger-listing talks, which are coming up in the months ahead—and we'll get into that some other time.

I deeply ask senators to consider what is at stake here and to let the Australian people know so that we can act. You're going to hear from lots of people in the next half an hour who will say they're doing what they can to save the reef, or they'll completely deny that there's a problem. But there is, and only we in places like this can fix it. (Time expired)