Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that the World Health Organization has acknowledged climate change to be the greatest threat to health this century;

(b) recognises that acting on climate change is the greatest opportunity to improve health;

(c) also recognises the Australian Government, as a signatory to the Paris Agreement, has an obligation to consider health in its climate change response;

(d) applauds the growing calls from the health sector to act on climate to protect our health, including the 30 health leaders in Parliament today meeting with representatives to discuss climate change and health; and

(e) calls on the Government to urgently develop a 'National Strategy on Climate Change, Health and Well-being', which is supported by more than 50 health, social welfare and conservation groups.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government already has a plan. The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, AHPPC, has identified climate change as a health protection priority and asked the Environmental Health Standing Committee and the National Health Emergency Standing Committee to undertake that work. Further, the government's draft of the national preventive health strategy recognises the environmental detriments to health of climate change and extreme weather events.

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

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

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

We oppose this motion. According to this motion, the World Health Organization is now an expert on climate. That's not a surprise, because Swedish high school dropouts are now experts on climate. Solar minimum is upon us. According to the University of Alabama in Huntsville and NASA satellite data, world temperatures in February 2021 were just 0.2 degrees above the long-term satellite average and well within natural variation and falling. The Northern Hemisphere is setting temperature records for cold and snow. The Thames has frozen over, as it did in the temperature minimum from 1790 to 1820. It's called climate variability. There's no proof that natural weather variations are related to human activity. Climate change can have a health impact—in fact, a mental health impact—due to the terrorism of the fear that is misrepresented on climate.

Question agreed to.