Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, Senators Gallagher and Roberts each submitted a letter, in accordance with standing order 75, proposing a matter of public importance. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Roberts:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The policy position of the Australian Government towards the continuing robust health of the Great Barrier Reef and the threat of environmental alarmism.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on this matter of public importance, as a servant to Queensland and Australia, to discuss Queensland's Great Barrier Reef. The onus is on honourable senators gathered here to expose the truth about our reef and repudiate the lies being told by extreme left-wingers hell-bent on control.

As widely reported in the media, last Friday Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party visited Yeppoon in Central Queensland and travelled to Great Keppel Island to inspect a reef—a small part of a wondrous, interconnected, living and robust organism. In telling the story of our beautiful reef we were assisted by Dr Alison Jones, who provided a realist's scientific perspective on coral bleaching. Coral science is Dr Jones's specific expertise. Dr Jones, a great Queenslander, told us that the part of the reef we visited had suffered a bleaching episode in 2006 and recovered just 12 months later. We visited the reef to draw attention to the fact, firstly, that bleaching of the reef has occurred over time many times; secondly, that the reef has always recovered; and, finally, that despite Green alarmism the reef is not dead. It is in fact robust and beautiful, and it should be visited. Why travel overseas when we can come to our own backyard and see this natural wonder?

The story of the reef is a uniquely Queensland story. It is our reef. We choose to share it with all Australians. It is an affront to Queensland that some Australians want to destroy the reputation of our most prominent icon, and it is an affront to decency that those Australians would destroy the reputation through fake science and lies. The destruction of the reef's reputation is being done to buttress the Greens' agenda of falsely claiming the world is warming through carbon dioxide and that humans are the cause. The casualty of the theory is hardworking Aussies. We do not get a dividend from the Greens' extreme theories. Queensland and Australia just lose jobs and prosperity. The Great Barrier Reef is visited by approximately 2.6 million people each year, but the numbers are falling. Max Allen, a tourism operator who was kind enough to ferry us to the reef in his Freedom Fast Cat, told us he used to have 200 visitors each day on his boat but now he is lucky to have 17—200 down to 17. That affects motels, service stations, supermarkets, services, businesses and even travel agents in the cities. Mr Allen, a proud and wonderful Queenslander, works on a part of the reef that is beautiful and full of natural wonders. The primary reason he has witnessed a drop in tourists visiting is the lies told by the Australian Greens and their mates.

Allow me to turn the Senate's attention to the cost of the Greens' lies. What is at stake if we allow this terrible invasion of lies onto our reef? It is true to say that a significant amount of the approximately $13 billion per annum in tourism expenditure and 115,000 ongoing tourism jobs, about three quarters of which are Queenslanders', are at high risk due to reckless Green alarmism. The Greens are happy to risk these jobs because, firstly, their highest vote is in the inner city, not regional Queensland; secondly, pretty signs that say, 'I love the reef and I vote,' are more important than facts; and, finally, they think the loss of jobs is mere collateral damage. Queenslanders reject the Greens' terrible foreign intervention in our reef. Today we reclaim our reef, our prosperity and our future. We reclaim our narrative.

The Great Barrier Reef is a total of 2,900 coral reefs and it stretches 2,300 kilometres along the Queensland coast, covering an area of 344,400 square kilometres. It has been World Heritage listed since 1981. Every part of it is beautiful and diverse, and visitors must show our reef respect. It is true that parts of the wonderful Great Barrier Reef face challenges. Some of those challenges are significant. Those challenges include natural bleaching, sedimentary run-off and crown-of-thorns outbreaks. In fact, one of the most significant bleaching episodes on the reef occurred in 2008, caused by record cold temperatures. Dr Alison Jones told those assembled in Yeppoon last Friday that coral is highly sensitive to changes in its environment. Inclement weather can trigger a bleaching episode; so, too, can any slight changes in water temperatures. Dr Jones informed us, on our research and promotional tour, that the coral almost always recovers from a bleaching event. Bleaching events are natural and, as mentioned, occur when the water warms or cools naturally.

Dr Jones is not the only courageous Queenslander to speak out against Green alarmism. We think of the courageous views of scientists who whistleblow on the doomsday scenarios—people such as Professor Peter Ridd of James Cook University. Professor Ridd pointed out that his research questioned the propaganda photographs of the reef paraded by the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the marine park authority, which purported to show long-term collapse of the reef's health, as being potentially misleading and wrong. James Cook University responded earlier this year in an anti-science way by censoring and threatening to fire him. Pre-eminent minds and everyday Aussies—people who speak out—are ridiculed and attacked. Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party says to these people: 'We are here for you to give you and your realism a voice.'

Misrepresentations, exaggerations and personal attacks are natural to the Greens. I think of Senator McKim, who said last week in reference to another matter: 'These comments may be accurate, but just because something is accurate does not mean it is reasonable or productive to talk about it.' Let those words sink in, Madame Acting Deputy President: even if something is accurate, Greens party spokesman Senator McKim thinks it is better we hide the truth, do not talk about it and shelter those not sensible enough to assess the information. Queenslanders are not mugs. Queenslanders are onto Senator McKim, the Greens and their lies. The Greens recently went on their own tour of the reef, so I am told. Up and down the coast they trudged. They begged tour operators to take them out but everyone rejected their advances. They were rejected, I am told, because Queenslanders do not like being lied to or lied about.

What Queenslanders do not like one tiny bit is when one of their own turns on them, like Senator Waters. An August 2016 synthesis by Jim Steele, in one of the most recent peer-reviewed journals Science, demonstrated coral reefs can be very resilient, are very resilient, and the gloom and doom claim of Green alarmists is based on unfounded fearmongering. I quote naturalist and essayist, Eric Worrall, who said:

Given Coral originated 540 million years ago, has survived numerous catastrophic extinction events such as the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which killed around 96 % of all marine species, and has effortlessly survived hundreds of millions of years of abrupt natural changes in global temperature, I would suggest the burden of proof—

is on Green alarmists—

to demonstrate why a few degrees gentle anthropogenic warming is such a threat … if … warming actually occurs.

Put simply, coral bleaching cannot occur from human-released carbon dioxide because empirical evidence exists to prove that humans are not causing an increase in global temperatures. The Greens are using control-oriented, elitist media to push their purposeful destruction of the reef's reputation. They are mendacious, destructive and out of order.

Their lies have infiltrated the international media. A US Forbes headline earlier this year stated, '50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is dead or dying'. A mock obituary by Outside went viral in October 2016, claiming that the Great Barrier Reef had passed away after a long illness. The Forbes statement is untrue. The Outsider is dangerous and outrageous. I wonder if the Greens are proud of themselves for perpetuating this worldwide lie. Then we have that bastion of left-wing tripe, the BBC. In 1999, it made the prediction the Great Barrier Reef is dying—blatant lies, most likely concocted to have tourists spend money in Nice, France, to advance the BBC's now destroyed pet project, the EU.

These international media outlets are not only aided and abetted in destroying our tourism sector by the reprehensible Greens policies; they are pushed along by headlines from Australia's own Sydney Morning Herald with headlines like, 'Is this the end of our Great Barrier Reef?' That article goes on to highlight the various levels of bleaching on the reef. It is sheer hate speech: job-destroying, reef-hating, Queensland-bashing Greens and their cousins in select media—disgraceful. No wonder Fairfax Media's circulation is falling. Then get a load of this: one recent ABC article was headed, 'Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching could cost $1 billion in lost tourism, research suggests'. No wonder there are calls from Queenslanders to sell the city aspects of the ABC—what drivel, what lies. Today, we mark the end of the elites' lies. We reclaim our reef.

All of this total ignorance of science is backed by liar-in-chief, Tim Flannery, the greatest clown to ever grace any Australian stage. He emotionally perpetuated this outrageous lie about the reef by saying:

This is one of the saddest days of my life. This great organism, the size of Germany and arguably the most diverse place on earth, is dying before our eyes.

Having watched my father die two years ago, I know what the signs of slipping away are. This is death, which ever-rising temperatures will allow no recovery from unless we act now.

What puke.

The Green's ignorance is laid bare in Senator Larissa Waters's campaign entitled 'Coal or the reef' in which she states: 'Global warming is the No. 1 one threat facing the reef and exporting millions of tonnes of coal through the reef will make it even worse. Without serious, immediate action, we are going to lose our natural wonder.' I say through the chair, at the next election Queenslanders will remind her of her betrayal of our home state. They will recall her party's bold new mantra articulated by Senator McKim, 'At all costs, hide the truth because to tell the truth is inconvenient.' Let us make Australia great again for everyone by protecting our Barrier Reef.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hard to know, really, where to start with that interesting contribution from the previous speaker. But can I assure the chamber that in the six years that I have been discussing the health of the reef with relevant coral reef scientists, with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, with the Institute of Marine Science, they are speaking with one voice in saying that the reef is under serious threat and that the biggest threat to the reef is human-induced global warming. There are a whole lot of other threats to the reef as well, many of which centre around water quality which, of course, has implications for how we manage our land and how we support farmers to adopt more sustainable practices and reduce sediment and pesticide run-off. But they are united in accepting that global warming is the biggest threat to the reef.

This is not some conspiracy. This is not some notion that has been cooked up by me or my party. This is something that the UN World Heritage Committee, the government's own Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the actual experts are begging government to listen to. Instead, what we see from government is an agenda to increase coal exports, to do more dredging and more dumping of that dredge spoil to expand coal export ports, more coal seam gas wells and unconventional gas wells to be sunk—often in our best farmland—again much of which is for export out through our reef. So our reef is under threat from global warming, but it is also under threat from those water quality issues, as well as those issues of industrialisation and increased shipping.

What has been really difficult for the tourism industry is the tricky position that they have been placed in. These people get to swim and be near and on the reef every day—they have perhaps got the best job in the world—and it is a very difficult position for them to be in to acknowledge that actually their product is seriously being changed by human activity. That is, of course, why some of them have been reticent to go public on this issue. I have had many of them talk to me privately and say: 'Look, we can't even take the tourists to the same place anymore because it doesn't look good anymore. We've had to change our location.' But when I urge them to speak out to increase the pressure on government so that we can change these policies and save the reef, you can understand their reluctance to deter potential tourists from coming to see the reef. This has been one of the most vexed issues—how do we ensure that the policies can change so that we can save what is left of the reef in the time that we have before we cook this planet, and how do we make sure that we can keep those jobs alive? Seventy thousand people and their livelihoods depend on the reef staying healthy.

This government has been shamelessly prioritising the needs of multinational fossil fuel companies in letting them open new coalmines, expand ports and send yet more ships out through the reef to further worsen global warming. Of course, the Queensland state Labor government has been no better and many of those approvals have been ticked off by them as well. So we have seen a full-on onslaught of the fossil fuel sector on the reef. It is why it has led eminent scientists like Professor Terry Hughes, who is in fact the world expert in the health of the reef, to say that we need to choose between new coal and the reef, and that we cannot have both. They have been his words on many an occasion; they have been his words before Senate inquiries that I have instigated into the management of the reef and how we can do better to try and protect it, and they have been his words to the media in the last two or three years. This is not some conspiracy to try to further some cooked-up agenda—if only it were. Sadly, this is the reality of what we are facing.

The reef has just seen the worst coral bleaching in its entire history. As the previous speaker said, sometimes corals can recover from bleaching. You need the conditions to be right: you need no more spikes in water temperatures, and you need to make sure that they have enough fresh water; that there are not other pressures like sediment or pesticides which are inhibiting that regrowth. So, if everything remains equal, they can sometimes regrow. Of course, it is not the same species that regrow, so the composition of the reefs still change. But they can regrow. What happened earlier this year, though, was that the bleaching was so severe and the water temperature remained high for so long that they lost that potential to regrow. The scientists at GBRMPA and at AIMS—all of the relevant people who actually study this—have said that, in fact, 22 per cent of all of the corals in the entirety of the reef—concentrated in the northern end, but 22 per cent of the whole reef—those corals have now died. The bleaching was so bad that they are now dead. So we now have to wait for the appropriate conditions for new corals to start to regrow, assuming that there is a proper substrate for them to take onto.

Senator Di Natale and I went and looked at some of these reefs that had been so severely bleached. It was truly heartbreaking to see fields of, effectively, brown rubble. I did not think it could look that bad. I thought that maybe the corals might just look a bit white, but actually the algae had come in and smothered them and they were starting to disintegrate. It was a sea of brown. And there was a lone clam in the middle, which obviously had no food source, and it was not going to last long either. It was extremely distressing to me. The scientists that were on that trip with us were shedding tears about the future of the reef.

This is not scaremongering. This is a desperate plea for a change in policy—to do everything we can to try to save the reef, as much as possible, given that we know how much global warming has already been locked into the system. Some of the scientists have lost hope, and they do not think that it is possible to save the reef. I refuse to accept that. I still think that we must do everything we can, and that we must work together in this chamber to change those policies that are seriously threatening the reef. We must do everything we can to save what is left of it, and whatever is savable. So I will continue to try to raise awareness of the peril that the reef is in, with the intention of getting a change in policy from the big parties—who are, sadly, beholden to the donations that they get from the fossil fuel sector, whether it is the coal-mining companies or whether it is the coal-seam gas companies, who simply want to get more and more of their product out through the reef—products which, when burnt, worsen climate change and make it harder for the reef to thrive.

I want to take issue with the comments by One Nation senators after a visit to the reef which they undertook at the end of last week. They went to an area that was in the south of the reef, off Great Keppel Island, assuming the reporting was correct. And they say that, because bleaching happened there ten years ago and the reef came back, therefore the whole reef is fine. Well, if only that were the case—if only you could stand in the streets of Brisbane say: 'Sydney doesn't have a traffic problem, because look—there are no cars here in Brisbane.' That kind of misguided logic is not only looking in the wrong place but is mixing up and confusing the difference between the bleaching of corals and when it gets so bad that they actually die. Unfortunately, 22 per cent of the reef has gotten that bad: it has died. That is an incontrovertible fact. It is not a UN hoax. It is not some bizarre Greens conspiracy. It is actually what the science has found. But we have the ability to change direction. Rather than simply jumping on the climate-change-is-a-hoax bandwagon—which, sadly, many of their backbench want to do—I would urge the government to stop sacking those scientists and to stop cutting funding to those bodies, and to actually listen to the advice. Let us collectively put our shoulders to the wheel, because this is an organism that is ancient; it is the largest living thing that can be seen from space; it is bigger than all of us, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. We can do so much better by it, and by the 70,000 people who rely on it for their jobs. If we are talking about a changing economy, and bailing out companies that go bust—well, that is 70,000 people. I do not see any outrage from the Labor opposition or the government about the fact that those jobs are under threat; they are simply propping up the profits of those multinational coal and gas corporations, who then make very generous donations to the government.

I want to finish by saying that I welcome the attention on the reef. It is something that I and many folk in my party have continued to raise for many years now. We have had multiple Senate inquiries. We have had some very good work done by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, despite the funding cuts that this government has brought down upon them. We have some excellent work being done by our coral reef scientists, and they are speaking with one voice, begging for us to listen and begging for this government and the opposition to change policies—so that we can save what is left of the reef. As a Queenslander who grew up visiting the reef, it affects me deeply. I will fight like hell to protect this beautiful place, and all of the 70,000 people whose jobs rely upon the reef remaining healthy. That should be a job for all of us in this chamber, rather than simply dismissing it as some cooked-up, bizarre frolic. I think that that is a real abrogation of our duty as senators to get across the facts, to listen to the people, to listen to the scientists and to then take good decisions where we can actually make a difference, not just to the future of those peoples' jobs but also to the future of this amazing organism.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find myself in the slightly unusual position of being in the centre or the middle of this debate. But perhaps that is something that we will all have to start to get used to in this wonderful new Senate that we have. I find myself disagreeing with the alarmist language used by Senator Waters. I was particularly caught by the phrase in her speech just then, 'in the time that we have got left before we cook this planet'. I am a bit more optimistic than Senator Waters on that; I do not think we are on the way to cooking our planet, and I think we have got quite a bit of time left—I certainly hope we do. On the other hand, the One Nation senators, including Senator Roberts, probably do not give due weight to the threat that the reef faces. The Turnbull government certainly acknowledges that there has been damage done in recent years to the reef. We also acknowledge that climate change and warming water is a factor in that damage. We are absolutely keen to address that damage, to limit it and to help restore the health of the reef, and we have significant programs which are designed to address that, which I will come to in a minute.

I should commend our One Nation colleagues for their direct action initiative of going to the healthy parts of the reef to demonstrate that the reef is still open for business, that it is still a great tourist destination, and that international visitors who might have seen negative headlines about the reef should not be discouraged from visiting. I took it to be an audition for the next Tourism Australia advertising campaign. I think the One Nation senators in their wetsuits would make quite a spectacular advertisement and attract international visitors.

As Senator Roberts said, there have been some exaggerations in this debate. There have been some instances where people have been a bit inflammatory with their language, where people have gone over the top and been fatalistic about the health of the reef when they should not be and when there is good reason to believe that it will recover and is on the way to recovering from the damage that has been done, and that the government is taking the necessary steps to achieve that. Senator Roberts referred to the work of Professor Ridd at James Cook University, and I think his work is certainly worth paying attention to, as is the work of his former colleague the late Professor Bob Carter, also at James Cook University—someone who I was very privileged to know in my professional life before coming here, someone who was very passionate about the health of the reef. Because he was so passionate about the health of the reef, he found it very frustrating when people would be unnecessarily pessimistic and overly dramatic about its future.

There is another perspective that I want to highlight in this debate before I get to the government's initiatives in this area, and that is comments made in a recent media article—and I apologise in advance if I am mispronouncing his surname; I am sure Senator Macdonald will correct me if I get it wrong—by the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Russell—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Reichelt.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald; I appreciate that. He made some very interesting comments in an article by Graham Lloyd published in The Australian in June this year, in which he absolutely acknowledged some damage done to the reef but also condemned the alarmist language being used by some in this debate. The article states:

"This is a frightening enough story with the facts, you don't need to dress them up. We don't want to be seen as saying there is no problem out there but we do want people to understand there is a lot of reef that is unscathed."

Dr Reichelt said there had been widespread misinterpretation of how much of the reef had died.

"We've seen headlines stating that 93 per cent of the reef is practically dead."

"We've also seen reports that 35 per cent, or even 50 per cent, of the entire reef is now gone."

"However, based on our combined results so far, the overall mortality rate is 22 per cent — and about 85 per cent of that die-off has occurred in the far north between the tip of Cape York and just north of Lizard Island, 250km north of Cairns. Seventy-five per cent of the reef will come out in a few months time as recovered."

He was particularly critical of Dr Flannery's language in this debate, as Senator Roberts has been. He characterised it as 'dramatic' and 'theatrical', and said:

… his prognosis, although of concern, was "speculative".

I think that is an important middle-ground recognition that, although we have issues in this area, it is not something that should be overdramatised.

As I highlighted earlier in my remarks, climate change is one important factor which does affect the health of the reef, and water temperature is one important contributor, but, as we all acknowledge and understand, it is not the only one. The other ones which affect the reef are ones which the government is able to have more direct impact on than on climate change. The Australian government on its own certainly cannot halt global average temperature increases. If we shut down Australian industry tomorrow, we would not be able to do it on our own. But one thing which we can do is influence the important issue of water quality and how that affects the reef. I refer to an article written by Josh Frydenberg, my friend from the other place, only a few weeks ago in The Courier-Mail, where he talked about some of the important initiatives that the Turnbull government has undertaken to address this issue:

For example, in the area of water quality, we are working with farmers to reduce nitrogen and sediment run off into the Reef. Adopting a market-based, competitive tender process, farmers are being financially incentivised to develop their own nitrogen targets and implement them.

In just the last year, trials in the wet tropics have prevented 86 tonnes of nitrogen from otherwise flowing into the Reef and this is just the start, as the goal is to reduce nitrogen run off by 80 per cent in the catchment area by 2025.

Reducing this run-off is important because the crown of thorns starfish, a coral-eating predator, has been breeding in rapid numbers as increased nitrogen flows into the water. During spawning, large females can produce up to 65 million eggs each as plankton blooms from more nutrients in the water, providing food for the starfish.

Indeed, the Institute of Marine Science documented how more than half the cover on coral reefs has been lost to crown of thorns outbreaks. While additional efforts have been taken to tackle the crown of thorns, including the commissioning of a new vessel staffed with indigenous rangers, minimising nitrogen run off is also key.

He goes on to outline a range of initiatives introduced by the government to address this, which I will also talk about now.

It is important to recognise how important the Great Barrier Reef is, how unique it is in the world and how important it is to Queensland and its tourism industry. I think the tourism industry, along with the 70,000 jobs it supports, is reason enough why we should both take this issue seriously and speak in a measure, responsible and mature way about this, not overdramatise it and send signals to the rest of the world that there is no Great Barrier Reef for them to come here and see; of course there is, and there are many parts of the reef that are very healthy. The Turnbull government has already invested $461 million in reef funding, which is part of a broader $2 billion 10-year plan focused on three key priorities: (1) reducing nitrogen runoff by working with farmers, (2) reducing gully erosion through landscape restoration and better grazing practices, and (3), as I mentioned, culling crown-of-thorns starfish.

This stands in contrast to the record of our predecessors. In their six years in office, part of which was almost in coalition with our friends from the Greens, there were five massive dredge disposal projects planned in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. During that time the World Heritage Committee put the reef on their in-danger watchlist. When the coalition came to office in 2013, we were determined to improve the health of the reef and get it off that list, and that is why we took unprecedented action to address that. For a start, we ended all five dredge disposals and put in place a ban on future capital dredge disposal projects in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Thankfully, as a result of this government's actions, the World Heritage Committee removed the reef from the in-danger watchlist and praised Australia as a global leader in reef management. I particularly recognise the work of another colleague of mine from Victoria, the former environment minister Greg Hunt, who is incredibly passionate about this issue and worked very diligently on this issue for many years in his previous portfolio. He needs to be credited for that important development.

We have our Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, which has been endorsed by the World Heritage Committee. It guides the work of our community, scientists, industry, farmers and others to boost the reef's resilience. A more resilient reef will be better equipped to deal with stressors such as climate change, the recent coral bleaching and cyclones. The reef 2050 plan brings together for the first time all of the work, expertise and investment necessary to manage the reef into the future and is based on the best available science.

We are already in the process of implementing the reef 2050 plan and we have established an independent expert panel, chaired by Australia's former Chief Scientist, and a cross-sectoral reef advisory committee. Importantly—and I suspect my Senate colleague Senator Macdonald will address this in a moment—we have created a new $1 billion Reef Fund which will support progress in tackling two of these biggest challenges, which are climate change, as I mentioned, and water quality.

In conclusion, the Turnbull government takes the health of the reef very seriously. We also take very seriously the need to not overly dramatise and be negative about the health of the reef as well because of the important role it plays in the Queensland tourism industry.

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a Queensland senator, I am very pleased to participate in this debate in relation to the health of the Great Barrier Reef and the threats that are posed to it. The records for February 2016 indicate that it was the warmest month ever measured globally, at 1.35 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. Even more concerning, February 2016 was more than 0.2 Celsius degrees warmer than January 2016, which held the previous monthly temperature record.

Climate change is indeed the greatest challenge we as a society face. The costs of doing nothing are incalculable. In my own state of Queensland, some regions have been suffering the worst drought in their history. Drought conditions have affected farm production and incomes, leading to reductions in agricultural employment and a reduction in the standard of living. Currently, around 80 per cent of Queensland is drought declared, and the agricultural sector is in serious trouble. Worse still, these conditions impacting on Queensland's agricultural industry are expected to be sustained by the current El Nino weather pattern. It is not the Prime Minister who worries about life in the bush; he does not have to live the struggle. It is the farmers who suffer, the very people who produce the grain for our bread and the sugar for our tea. They are the ones who are living through climate change.

This issue does not stop with the agricultural sector; it trickles down and flows through the veins of the Australian landscape. Our Great Barrier Reef is also under threat. The reef alone contributes billions of dollars to the Australian economy and provides employment for more than 70,000 people, yet it is being destroyed as a result of climate change. Climate change, and its associated impacts, poses the greatest threat to the long-term sustainability of coral reefs worldwide, primarily via mass coral-bleaching events. Rapid increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are consequently warming ocean temperatures beyond thresholds in which corals can thrive. As corals form the foundation of the reef and provide essential habitat to reef fish and invertebrates, the loss of coral can cause reductions in the populations of other reef inhabitants.

While I am saying these words I am looking at the interim report of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The authority has handed down an interim report which says the first phase of its surveys shows that:

… 22 per cent of coral on the Reef died due to the worst mass bleaching event on record.

Eighty-five per cent of this mortality occurred in the 600 kilometre stretch between the tip of Cape York and just north of Lizard Island.

Overall, the area south of Cairns escaped significant mortality.

Many different stressors can cause coral bleaching, including freshwater inundation and poor water quality from run-off. However, heat stress from above-average temperatures is the only known cause of mass coral bleaching

This is not just a problem for the future; we are already experiencing the extremes of climate change that threaten the future of our country. Given the scale and imminent threat that we face, I am alarmed that the Turnbull government continues to uphold its do-nothing stance on climate change. In the past two years, the Abbott-Turnbull government has: abolished a price on pollution; abandoned an emissions trading scheme; slashed the renewable energy target; cut funding to carbon capture and storage; tried to abolish the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; and imposed massive cuts on the CSIRO.

We all remember when Malcolm Turnbull was a champion of climate change action and was prepared to join with Labor in a bipartisan approach to introducing an emissions trading scheme. But now we can see Mr Turnbull's true colours as leader—rather than taking on one of the greatest challenges this country faces, Mr Turnbull has traded up for the cheap thrill of policy-free leadership. This government has slashed CSIRO's budget by $115 million, with 350 CSIRO staff targeted for redundancy—it seems to be the entire climate monitoring capacity. Here we have a government that pays lip service to innovation. Is it true that Malcolm Turnbull does not understand the critical role of basic science as the bedrock of an innovation nation? Of course he does; he only has to read the paper. His policies on climate change are as cynical as his ambitions to get rid of a Senate that disagrees with him.

Labor are prepared to fix things. Only Labor have a policy to strengthen the renewable energy sector and to commit to more ambitious CO2 reduction targets. We will create jobs and drive investment to support the re-emergence of the renewable energy sector—a sector which was doing well but is sadly faltering under the current government's policies.

I am certain that the majority of Australians would agree that the CSIRO needs to be supported as one of Australia's few world-class scientific organisations. Cutting Australia's climate research capacity and damaging its reputation for quality science not only brings into question Turnbull's commitment to innovation; it is a blatant attempt to silence the work that holds the government to account on its climate change policies.

I would like to turn now to Senator Roberts' contribution and would make the comment that this seems to be one of the stranger MPIs to be discussed since I have been in the Senate. I know that the good senator and his One Nation colleagues have had a trip to Great Keppel Island. I commend them for shining a light on this issue and for highlighting the Great Barrier Reef. It is a beautiful part of the world and the place they visited is one of the healthiest parts of the reef. However, their trip seems to have been one that departed from reality. As a senator who has been around for a couple of years, I have seen a few stunts, but on this particular occasion this stunt does not appear to have been very effective. If they wanted to look at the issues affecting the Great Barrier Reef, their trip should have been to Lizard Island; their trip should have been to parts of the reef north of Port Douglas. I note the contribution by the Climate Council's Professor Lesley Hughes that their trip was 'like taking journalists reporting on a conflict to a five-star holiday resort miles away from the actual war zone'.

The claims by Senator Roberts that climate change is not real and that it is in fact a conspiracy are somewhat embarrassing to our country. They are embarrassing for Australians and they are damaging Queensland's standing in the Australian and international science community. Embarrassing as this may be, we need to get back to the facts and to rely on the evidence.

In that regard, I point to recent research by the University of Central Queensland which undertook a survey of 1242 visitors departing the domestic terminal at Cairns International Airport between October 2015 and September 2016. It was part of a larger study of visitors to the Cairns region. It looked in particular at the experiences respondents had of the Great Barrier Reef. In fact, 71 per cent of the sample had visited the Great Barrier Reef during their trip. The survey touches on the issue of the coral-bleaching event of 2016. One of the findings was that, although pre-trip expectations were met in the majority or 59 per cent of cases, there was a gradual decline in expectations being met during and after the event. The critical point I would like to make is that, when asked if they would still have made the trip to Cairns if the Great Barrier Reef was affected by a major coral-bleaching event, those indicating 'yes' rose during and after the coral bleaching event. We know that visitors to the reef did their research; they were aware of the reports on coral bleaching; two-thirds of respondents indicated having read or seen reports on coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. The majority of these respondents were concerned as a result, with 42 per cent indicating a lot of concern and 43 per cent a little concern. As a result, 45 per cent indicated their information search influenced their decision to visit Cairns.

The argument that green alarmism has been a threat to the reef or has had a negative impact on the marine tourism industry does not hold any water. Senator Roberts, I strongly encourage you and your colleagues to have another look at the research and have another look at the facts. There is a lot at stake in this matter; we need to consider and respect the work of the scientists.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ketter's last point is really what this debate is all about. Thanks to the scaremongering of the Greens political party, some elements of the Labor Party and one or two so-called scientists, the word is getting around the world that the reef is dead. As a result of that, people are thinking twice about visiting the Great Barrier Reef. That is why Jenny Hill, the Labor mayor of Townsville, was absolutely incensed when she heard Professor Hughes going out on her own with that false report about the coral coverage on the Great Barrier Reef.

That leads me to Senator Waters' campaign to denigrate the reef, as she always does. She talked about the northern section. The results from that survey, which involved the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and one or two scientists from James Cook University, said that the other three sections of the Barrier Reef had increased their coral coverage during the time of the survey. The only one that was in issue was the northern section, but they said it started from a very high base and there had been some loss of coral coverage, but most of the reef was growing. You would not have heard that from Professor Hughes or from the Greens political party. As a result of that, people overseas are worried.

I thank the One Nation Party for raising this particularly important matter for discussion again today. I appreciate them doing it. It is not new; it is something I have been talking about for 26 years in this parliament. But it has been hard to get your voice heard above the screaming from the Greens and the Labor Party about 'All is dead', 'Woe is me' and 'The world is coming to an end'.

It is always important to have some facts. I repeat that last major assessment, which involved the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and several university professors, one of whom broke ranks and went out and announced her findings before the rest were able to deliver the accurate findings. I remember when that came out. It was the night that the AIMS board had met in Townsville and they were having cocktails in the evening. The Mayor of Townsville was there, and they were all incensed when this unusual view of the research findings news came out from Professor Hughes.

I congratulate Dr Reichelt, whom my colleague has mentioned, who has been a wonderful advocate for the Reef over many years, in many different roles; and Mr John Gunn, who is head of the Australian Institute Of Marine Science. They do a hell of a lot of work all the time to ensure the protection of the Reef.

The Australian Reef, the Great Barrier Reef, is one of the best managed reefs anywhere in the world. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of the Save Our Marine Life alliance, who published this document that I keep trying to give to Senator Waters but never seem to be able to hand to her. It is called The big blue legacy, and it sets out in a wonderfully colourful booklet all of the positive things that Australian governments have done—and it is always Liberal governments that have done anything for our marine park establishments and protecting our Reef.

Indeed, you will recall that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park itself was set up in 1979 by the then Prime Minister, the Hon. Malcolm Fraser. You would recall that all positive initiatives with our marine activities anywhere throughout Australia's history have been done by Liberal governments, either federal or in the various states. Time will not permit me to go through them all, but the new marine park arrangements were introduced by Robert Hill when he was the environment minister, and then David Kemp as minister oversaw the introduction of the south-east marine park. We will have, I think, Mr Frydenberg presiding over the Coral Sea marine park, providing he gets it right. It was going off track under the previous, Labor government, but I am hopeful that when that comes out it will be a credit to Australia but also allow fishermen and tourist operators to continue to access parts of those areas in a sustainable and sensible way.

The Greens and those in the Labor Party who are always scaremongering about the Reef do not seem to understand the importance of jobs on the Great Barrier Reef. It is okay for people like Senator Waters who might visit the Reef every now and again. I have lived most of my life on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. I associate with people who go out there fishing, people who go out there diving, tourist operators, and fishermen, and we understand what the Reef is all about. The Reef is a very resilient organism. It has been there for hundreds of thousands of years. It is a bit like climate change. I do not deny that the climate is changing; I accept that it has. I always give the rather exaggerated example that once the world was covered in ice and now it is not. So, clearly, the climate has changed over hundreds of thousands of years.

It is the same with the Great Barrier Reef. It adapts. It is a series of organisms that do adapt to whatever the situation is. I was talking to Mr Gunn on the aeroplane coming down here yesterday, and AIMS are doing a lot of work on coral bleaching, in a really scientific way—not in an over-the-top political way, making announcements that chase away tourists from Europe and America.

I have a friend who has a resort up that way, and he tells me that one of the greatest tourist attractions near his part of the Great Barrier Reef is a piece of white coral that the boats go over and have been going over for, I think he said, 20 years. But the Greens or one of those environment groups went out there and they said, 'Look; here's an example of coral bleaching,' and it was anything but. It was an outstanding piece of white coral.

I mention all these things because they demonstrate how there are a group of people in this country who seem hell-bent on destroying all of the jobs, activities and pleasures that the Reef provides to not only Australians but mankind.

Thanks to the One Nation party for raising this important issue. I think it is good that the parliament can discuss these sorts of issues in a sensible way, and bring some facts and truth and actual situations to the debate. Too often in this place we hear these negatives being thrown around by the Greens and their mates in the Labor Party. I had to smile at Senator Ketter's survey that he was talking about. He said 59people saw a reduction in the Reef. But I think he was talking about visitors who have probably only ever been there once, so how would they know there has been a reduction? It would only be because the Greens political party and their mates keep telling the world that the Reef is dying—when, quite frankly, it is not.

It is still a magnificent spectacle. It is a coral reef that is teeming with wildlife of all sorts. The response to and the praise you get from, in particular, foreign tourists about our Great Barrier Reef are just remarkable, and it is continuous. We have something to be very proud of, and AIMS, GBRMPA and CSIRO, who do a wonderful job there and are very much contributing to these areas, will continue to properly manage our Great Barrier Reef and continue to keep it in the wonderful condition it is in now and forever.

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

The One Nation family holiday to the Great Barrier Reef is a joke.

Senator Hanson interjecting—

You can laugh. I would be laughing too, actually, if the situation were not so very, very serious for the Reef. Because the truth is it is pretty hilarious!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you ever been there?

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

I will take that interjection, Senator Macdonald: I most certainly have been to the Great Barrier Reef. It is hilarious that Senator Roberts, who is so keen to insist on—so keen to demand—empirical evidence from others, is happy to conclude that the Reef is healthy based on a single dive. Now, where was that dive? That dive, according to media reports, was off Yeppoon, hundreds of kilometres away from the more serious bleaching at places like Port Douglas and Lizard Island. Diving where Senator Hanson did and concluding that the reef is fine is a little bit like auditing the Prime Minister's harbour-side electorate and coming to the conclusion that the economy is doing just great. Some parts of the reef are healthy—yes, of course they are—but some parts are not. The issue is that more parts are unhealthy now than they were 30 years ago, because the system is deteriorating. The cause, in part, is climate change.

We need to look at the empirical evidence about the reef. Over the last 30 years, hard coral cover has declined from 28 per cent to 13 per cent. That comes from the strategic assessment undertaken by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the government authority. What did they say? They said:

Even with the recent management initiatives to reduce threats and improve resilience, the overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is poor, has worsened since 2009 and is expected to further deteriorate in the future. Greater reductions of all threats at all levels, Reef-wide, regional and local, are required to prevent the projected declines in the Great Barrier Reef and to improve its capacity to recover.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority undertakes actual surveys of the reef, and they are far more rigorous than four senators in wetsuits having a splash. The surveys for this year are yet to be completed, but it is suspected that the rate of bleaching is going to be higher than the initial estimate of 22 per cent, due to higher ocean temperatures. The director of reef recovery, Dr David Wachenfeld, has said, 'Essentially, this is confirming that this is the worst bleaching event that the reef has seen by a very, very long way.' A few months ago, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies conducted extensive aerial and underwater surveys about how much coral has been killed. They found that 35 per cent of coral in central and northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef have died. We know and, of course, we accept that parts of the reef that have been affected in this way will recover, but the problem is that, over time, placed under greater and greater stress by a range of interventions from humans, the reef's ability to recover is deteriorating. There will be very real consequences for our kids and for future generations who might want to go and try scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.

The underlying issue which I suspect One Nation senators are trying to suggest—because they tell us about it fairly regularly—is that they consider that climate change is not real. I hesitate on the need to repeat this here in this chamber, but climate change is real, and that is accepted by all those on this side of the chamber. It is also accepted, as it happens, by 97 per cent of climate scientists. It is reinforced by the ICCP reports. The truth is that this is not an open question. Climate change is real; the question that we are now trying to answer, that scientists are trying to answer, is: how bad is it going to get? On the other hand, media stunts are not science. Senator Roberts's flirtation with the American far right is no substitute—no substitute at all—for the peer review process.

We have heard coalition senators stand up and say that they take climate change seriously. Senator Paterson talked about the government's actions to protect the reef and to take the references to it out of the UN's climate change report. That is more a triumph of lobbying than a triumph of environmental policy. More seriously, the only remaining pieces of the coalition's climate change policy lie in tatters. We will be able to make our 2020 climate change targets only because of reductions in land clearing. In Queensland and New South Wales, laws that were introduced in Queensland and that were sought to be introduced in New South Wales to halt land clearing threaten that outcome. The Direct Action carbon reduction policy is running out of steam. The Clean Energy Regulator announced this month that it would pay a further $367 million to polluting industries, in return for them to commit to reducing carbon emissions by 34.4 million tonnes. It is the smallest of four auctions held by the regulator, and it leaves about $440 million in the Emissions Reduction Fund for further carbon abatement contracts. About 83 per cent of that fund has now been spent. The federal government's climate policy is pretty much exhausted. There is no further funding committed to the program and there is no signal from government about what they intend to do to put Australia on a pathway toward decarbonisation. The very sad thing is that climate change is very real. It is very real, it is affecting the reef and it is affecting other ecosystems, but, unfortunately, on the government side, there is no credible policy to tackle it.

Senator Roberts said in his remarks, 'The casualties of the theory of global warming are hardworking Aussies.' Actually, One Nation's climate change policy is going to hurt the very people that they claim to represent. We do not help the tourism industry by pretending that there is not a problem. Senator Macdonald likes to say that the senators on this side who do not agree with him in some way do not care about jobs. I can tell him that that is not true. That is not true at all for me or for many of the other senators in this chamber who regularly speak about the impacts of climate change on our economy.

Tourism is our largest services export and employs more than one million Australians. There are more than 276,000 tourism businesses in Australia. Our pitch to tourists is, more often than not: 'Come to Australia. Come and see our amazing natural environment.' The problem is that it is threatened by global warming. In many of our ecosystems—in the alpine area, in the southern forests, in the wetlands, in the Wet Tropics, in Kakadu and on the reef—unless we take action, we will start to see ecological decline. In some instances we are already seeing it. It is up to us as parliamentarians, as people in this place, to deal with this honestly. Putting our heads in the sand and pretending that it is not happening, pretending that it is somehow un-Australian to refer to these threats, is not the way we should be approaching a very serious problem.

Senator Burston asked a question of Senator Canavan today about fisheries in New South Wales—concerned, I think, about the families and communities that rely on fishing. Well, global warming threatens the very ecosystems that these families and these fishing communities rely on. Oysters and other shellfish, for example, are harmed by the acidification of the ocean that is caused by global warming. In other examples, the Climate Change Council has recently taken a look at the exposure of rural and regional Australia to climate change. And what do they find? They find that far from this being a problem that preoccupies only inner-city dwellers, rural and regional Australians are particularly vulnerable to climate change at an economic level because of the increased risks of severe weather events, because of the deepening of El Nino cycles, because of the intensification and frequency of drought and because of the warmer oceans, which causes more tropical storms and more hurricanes. The consequence of this is that agricultural businesses and farming families have used up their financial reserves or are taking on more debt in response to extreme weather events.

Climate change has real consequences for communities and it is time this chamber started taking them seriously. It is not enough to pigeonhole this as some ideological crusade that you can use to please some small group of preselectors. This is an issue that deserves our most serious attention. One Nation is perpetrating a fraud on the Australians who believe in them when it comes to climate change. Senator Roberts's flirtation with the far Right of Australian politics is no reason to jeopardise the livelihoods of thousands of Australians.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for discussion has now expired.