Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address and respond to the remarks made by Senator Roberts just now, in his contribution to this debate. It concerns me deeply to hear a representative of the Australian people present in this chamber information about climate change that simply cannot be substantiated by reference to any credible scientific literature. It concerns me that at this time, so many years after we were first alerted to the dangers of climate change, we hear a representative of the Australian people deny that humans are impacting on our climate, deny that we have any obligation to address that and conflate those who seek to take action on climate change with people who would destroy our economy. Because the truth is that there are many opportunities for Australia, should we choose to take climate seriously. There are many opportunities for us in manufacturing, there are opportunities for us in renewing our energy sector and there are opportunities for us in supporting the cities in our region to adapt their own cities to those aspects of climate change that we can now no longer avoid. It is time for the Australian debate to move on from simple denialism; away from simple denialism and towards a mature conversation, not only about how we will respond to the aspects of climate change that we cannot avoid because we have left our run too late but also about how we can move urgently to decarbonise our economy and start to reap the economic benefits that come from being a leader rather than a laggard in this space.

I heard from Senator Roberts this morning that we as humans do not affect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—that these are natural fluctuations. This simply does not accord with the historical record. The historical record shows carbon dioxide and its equivalents—as a proportion of our atmosphere—climbing to highs that are unknown in the historical record, and it has dangerous implications for the stability of our climate and for global warming. What we know from the science is that a warming climate will bring about significantly more frequent extreme weather events such as storms, floods, cyclones and, indeed, in this country, fire. These are things that all Australians ought to be very concerned about.

One of the great ironies is that, while people in this chamber continue to debate the basic science—the science that was settled many years ago—business is out there getting on with the challenge of dealing with the impact of climate change on its own businesses and industries. I had the privilege before I came to this place to work in a global infrastructure firm, and I can tell you that many of the infrastructure clients that we dealt with were getting on with the job. They include people who operate roads. Some of the major road operators in this country are getting ready to deal with the fact that more intense deluges of rain occurring more frequently are likely to put significant strain on the drainage system of the infrastructure, and they are starting to make preparations to enhance the capability of those road networks to remove water arising from very extreme rain events. People who deal with transmission infrastructure, such as electricity transmission, are starting to make preparations for more frequent fire events—fire events which we know can have a very significant effect on the electricity transmission networks—and they are doing so in the knowledge that climate change will increase the intensity and frequency of those events. Businesses involved in coastal property development are starting to think about their exposure to sea level rise and to the much greater storm surges that will come about when we have a more serious storm event under climate scenarios.

Australia has very specific risks in relation to climate. Indeed, when Professor Garnaut undertook his review of the impacts of climate change on Australia, its society and its economy, he found that Australia was much more likely than many other countries to suffer under a warming scenario. Perhaps one of the industries that are most exposed is Australia's tourism industry. We can look at it at the two extremes. We know about the damage that is being caused on the Great Barrier Reef by warming. We know that with warming temperatures comes warming waters and with that comes coral bleaching events. We know from all of the tourist operators up in the north of Australia that those warming and bleaching events have a very serious impact on our ability to draw tourists to this most amazing natural attraction, which we happen to have the stewardship of. Down south, we know that the ski fields are being critically impacted by warming, by having shorter winters and warmer winters. The ability to maintain snow cover in the Alpine area is likely to be significantly impacted should warming continue unabated. These are all serious economic impacts, and they are impacts that you would expect would be taken seriously by all senators in this chamber. They are also impacts that you would expect would be taken seriously by the government.

Unfortunately, climate action is not a focus for this government. Indeed, it spent the first years after being elected setting about dismantling all of the architecture put in place by the Labor government to deal with climate change. Unfortunately, this leaves us in a position where we have no credible mechanism to meet the targets that we have agreed to most recently in Paris in dealing with climate change—no mechanism whatsoever. I attended a hearing recently with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of the Environment and Energy. When officers were asked 'Where is the evidence, where is the modelling, that shows us that we can comfortably meet these targets that the government has agreed to in its negotiations in Paris?' they could not point to that evidence. They could not point to it because they have not actually done the modelling. I will tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that I was quite shocked by this response, because it struck me that a government that was assuring the Australian public that it had all of the tools in place to meet its international agreements on climate would have had at least a look—it would have instructed its departments to get in there and just check—to see whether or not the policies we have now are sufficient to get us to the targets that we have agreed to in Paris. But, no, it has not done so. This is symptomatic of the very low level of attention that this government pays to climate change.

I suspect the truth is that many on the opposite side, many on the government benches, do not themselves believe the science. It is a great shame that we still find ourselves in a position so many years after climate change was first demonstrated, so many years after the world scientific community reached consensus about the role of humans in climate change, where many members on the benches opposite cannot bring themselves to accept the science.