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

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that, on 20 March 2024, the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a clear margin, projecting a potential breach of the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold and that:

(i) at 2 degrees Celsius warming 99% of the world's coral reefs will die,

(ii) the Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing the fifth mass coral bleaching event in 8 years, and

(iii) 64,000 jobs and a $6 billion tourism industry are reliant on a living, healthy and protected Great Barrier Reef;

(b) condemns the Albanese Labor Government's continued approvals for new coal, oil and gas mines, which do not align with settled climate science on what is required to keep warming within the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold needed to protect the future of the Great Barrier Reef; and

(c) calls on the Minister for Environment and Water to stop approving new coal and gas mines and urgently visit the Great Barrier Reef to witness the mass bleaching and mortality of corals firsthand.

I look forward to contributions in the chamber from fellow senators. I just wanted to start by framing up where we are in history by reading some details today from the World Meteorological Organization's State of the global climate report, which has confirmed that 2023 has broken every single climate indicator that the meteorological organisation monitors and publishes. The report was named literally 'off the charts'.

Looking back at 2023, the UN agency's annual State of the global climate report confirmed 2023 was the hottest year on record since records have begun. Ocean heat, which is directly related to our discussion here today about the Great Barrier Reef, has reached its highest level since records began. Global mean sea level rise reached a record high. Antarctic sea ice retreated to a record low. The report found that, on an average day in 2023, nearly one-third of the global ocean was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems. This was well above the previous record of 23 per cent, set in the previous warmest ocean year of 2016. It noted that heating is expected to continue, with reports stating it could be irreversible on scales of hundreds to thousands of years.

Senators, consider that. Consider the marine heatwaves we are seeing around the planet. The World Meteorological Organization is saying these changes could be irreversible for hundreds and thousands of years. In other words, some of the marine ecosystems we have been lucky enough to grow up with, like the Great Barrier Reef, could be seeing irreversible harm.

Glaciers in North America and the European Alps have suffered massive losses after experiencing what's called 'extreme melt', according to the World Meteorological Organization. In Switzerland, glaciers lost around 10 per cent of their remaining volume in the last two years. Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—all reached record-high observed levels. The report stated:

The long-term increase in global temperature is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

It goes on, for anyone who wants to read it. But it says at the end that climate change is currently being hampered by a lack of capacity to deliver and use climate services to inform national mitigation and adaption plans. Of course, mitigation means reducing emissions, tackling global warming and climate change at its root cause—reducing emissions especially in developing countries.

So Australia, a nation girt by sea, boasts one of the world's great treasures, the Great Barrier Reef, an ecosystem so big, it can be seen from space, a global treasure declared a UNESCO World Heritage site because of its outstanding universal values. These are the same values which are directly in danger from these marine heatwaves, which are spreading not just along the Great Barrier Reef but along coral reefs all around the world and ecosystems all around the south of our beautiful island home. Where I live in Tasmania we're still seeing record heat and loss of habitat. All our oceans are groaning under the strain of marine heatwaves.

In reading this report today, I reflect on when I came into this place in 2012. I had a pretty good idea about marine conservation, climate change and why I wanted to go into the Senate, but, if you had told me 12 years ago that I would be standing here today, on a Thursday afternoon in 2024, reading out this list of catastrophic impacts on our oceans from our warming planet, I wouldn't have believed you. The step changes we are seeing are very alarming.

You might find that amusing, Senator Urquhart, but I don't.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would ask Senator Whish-Wilson to withdraw that. I may have been grinning, but it certainly wasn't at anything he said.

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

I withdraw that.

And this is on us. Every environmental problem you can name is first and foremost a political problem because only politics, politicians and political pathways can fix it. Not only are we not acting anywhere near fast enough on rising global emissions; we're actually trying to deny at the most official levels that the Great Barrier Reef and its outstanding universal values—exactly why UNESCO declared it of world heritage value—are in danger. We're actually out there lobbying to deny that it's in danger from these marine heatwaves caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

I don't need to remind senators in this chamber of the contribution Australia makes not just through its own emissions footprint but in the exports of fossil fuels. We have an inherent conflict of interest here as a nation that is one of the biggest exporters and highest per capita polluters on the planet as well as the custodian of this global treasure. It's high time we recognise that we need to do everything we possibly can to save the Great Barrier Reef.

While reefs can recover from coral bleaching, they won't recover if we see increased frequency and intensity of these marine heatwaves. While we're weeks away from finding out the extent of the current mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef—by the way, senators and everyone in the chamber today: this is the fifth mass coral bleaching that we've seen on the Great Barrier Reef in eight years. The first recorded coral bleaching was in 1998. The second was the year I started in the Senate: 2012. The reef at least had time to recover from those coral bleachings. We have now seen five in eight years, including back-to-back bleachings, which our best climate models predicted wasn't possible until 2050. We've already seen that. Unfortunately, the early indications are that this fifth mass coral bleaching in the last eight years is going to be a bad one.

What will we do to reflect on that? Will we try to cover it up at UNESCO? Will we send ministers and senior bureaucrats to go to UNESCO to lobby against an 'endangered' listing? Why would we be hiding the fact that the reef is dying on our watch and it's our fault? Why would we possibly do that when letting the world know the truth about the barrier reef—in fact, all the world's coral reefs—might just be the siren we need to get action.

Half a billion people around the world rely on coral reefs for their livelihoods. I don't need to remind senators about the 64,000 jobs on the Great Barrier Reef, the tourism industry that brings in people from all around the world and the contribution to our economy. It's all at risk if this continues. Let's look at the predictions. Our best science, through the IPCC, tells us that if we get to two degrees of warming above preindustrial levels, we will see a 99 per cent decline in coral reefs all around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef. Where are we at now? Some forecasts already have us at 1.5 degrees warming above preindustrial levels. It's already happening. As I've just mentioned, there have been five mass-bleaching events from marine heatwaves in eight years. Imagine what two degrees is going to be like. In fact, imagine what three degrees warming is going to be like for future generations. That is the legacy we are leaving them by hiding the fact that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger if we don't act.

A few weeks ago, when I asked the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water for an update, she was unable to provide that because she didn't have a brief. I've had a quick look at the social media of the environment minister, Minister Plibersek. I've seen one video that she's done from her office about this greatest of global tragedies that's unfolding right before our very eyes in real time.

We don't just talk about the environmental impacts of this. We also talk about the impacts on humans, communities and their livelihoods. We need to act. We need a political pathway to act. People will not vote for climate action and vote for change if they are being deceived about what is going on below the waves and below the water. Well, I've seen it firsthand, and I know that others in this chamber have also seen it. It's only going to get worse unless we act. The only way we're going to fix it is in places like the Australian Senate and in the Australian parliament, by showing some leadership on the global stage and not trying to deceive and cover up what is actually going on with the Great Barrier Reef.

Today, I call on the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to go to the Great Barrier Reef. Go and have a look for yourself, and make a video from the Great Barrier Reef. Make a video to show the world what's going on. Why would we hide this? I'll leave you to decide what the possible motivations might be.

When I chaired the first Senate inquiry into warming oceans in 2016-17, we visited the Great Barrier Reef. It appeared to me that it was the tourism industry that didn't want to talk about the reef being in danger from global warming, but it has also occurred to me that there are a lot of other vested interests that don't want to see UNESCO recognising the absolute peril that the Great Barrier Reef is in, like fossil fuel interests that donate to big political parties and governments that don't want to be forced to act. We are not going to let you off the hook. People are waking up to the fact that the planet is changing and not for the better. Oceans are absolutely critical to our communities right around the country.

Next week, members of the Great Southern Reef Foundation, abalone fishers, sea urchin fishers and processors are coming to Canberra to talk about the changes they are seeing underwater on the Great Southern Reef. The Great Southern Reef, sister of the Great Barrier Reef, also has the scourge of invasive species or overabundant native species, like long-spined sea urchins. The Great Southern Reef is getting next to no funding from Parliament House in Canberra. It is arguably more important than the Great Barrier Reef in so many ways, given its contribution to the Australian economy and the number of people who are employed in commercial fishing sectors that are suffering because of warming oceans, marine heatwaves and rising emissions. We have to act not just for future generations but for communities right around the country, and when you see oyster farmers going out of business in New South Wales, which was also reported this week, because of unprecedented record high sea temperatures off the coast of New South Wales, you realise the economic costs of not acting.

This government, just like previous governments, can fly around the world and lobby countries at UNESCO to vote against an endangered listing, but it's not going to help. It's not going to make any difference to the Great Barrier Reef. If we continue on this trajectory of burning more fossil fuels and not acting on mitigating emissions then the reef, as we have been lucky enough to know it in our lifetimes, will be gone. It is already in a sad state of affairs right now, and it will only get worse if, in places like the Australian parliament, we don't do what's required to safeguard the future of the reef.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have struggled with my voice this week, so hopefully Broadcasting can help me out if I'm a little bit quiet. This is an important debate and so, as the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef, I'm going to push through, and thank you for your indulgence.

The truth is that our government is doing more than any other government has done to reduce emissions, to reach net zero, to transition our energy market, to invest in renewables, to work with our partners around the world and to tackle to climate change, which is a risk to coral reefs around the globe, including the Great Barrier Reef. Our government is doing more than any other government has done previously. And the truth is very different from that put by the mover of this motion, Senator Whish-Wilson, and that is that, after a disgraceful decade of denial and delay on climate policy, a motion from the Greens political party in this chamber won't help the Great Barrier Reef, but action by members on this side of the chamber, by a Labor government, will. That is why we are working to take action on climate change and to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

In my contribution today I will do the same thing that I've done every day since being appointed as the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef: I will talk about the facts of the reef because I know there is some misleading information out there. Our government has been transparent and accountable when it comes to the Great Barrier Reef's health. I'll talk about the action that we're taking to protect the Great Barrier Reef, to ensure that it is resilient against climate change, and I'll talk about how we're bringing people together on this task, because the one thing that the mover of this motion won't admit is that we can't take action on climate change and improve the health of the Great Barrier Reef alone; we must do that in partnership with countries around the world and we must do that with communities across the country, but particularly in regional Queensland. What we don't want to do is divide and make this a political debate about who is right and who is wrong and not accepting the science. What we need is to bring everyone together so that we can walk this journey together and ensure that the Great Barrier Reef is protected for generations to come.

I live in regional Queensland. I'm surrounded by some of the world's most incredible natural assets. I have the World Heritage listed Wet Tropics rainforest on the one side and the Great Barrier Reef on the other. The reef is literally my backyard, and so, as someone who lives and breathes our unique natural environment, having the privilege of being the Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef is something that I take extremely seriously.

I also have a deep sense of responsibility to the task at hand, the challenges we face and the future that we leave behind because, while this might be a debate today in Canberra, I'd argue that senators from Queensland understand this is about Queensland communities. We can have a motion moved by a Tasmanian senator but, when we talk about the Great Barrier Reef, we're talking about the lives and livelihoods of people in Queensland, and so I will talk from that experience, as I always do.

Our precious Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing a coral bleaching event. Aerial surveys conducted in recent weeks by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science confirm that there is a widespread bleaching occurring at the moment. Those two agencies, based in North Queensland, up there in Townsville, have been reporting on the health of the reef every single week since the start of summer. They have been transparent and accountable, and they have been doing incredibly good work. I will not have the work that they've been doing disparaged by those in this chamber. They have been making sure that they've been keeping people up to date. Unfortunately, the news that they had to deliver in the last couple of weeks has been difficult news for them to share as well.

Those scientists suggest that the heat stress has not been even across the reef and that coral bleaching observed has been variable, but we know that in the next couple of weeks, in-water surveys will collect data to help us understand the extent of the bleaching. For example, this will tell us whether there is evidence of bleaching at deeper reef habitats or whether this is contained to shallow waters. It is also important to note that bleaching of corals does not always result in coral mortality. If conditions cool, there is an ability for corals to recover. We've seen this occur with previous bleaching events, although, as we know, having these events closer together is making it more difficult for reefs to recover. This is the predicament that we are in.

There have been high winds and swell over the last week, which has resulted in sea surface temperatures starting to drop, but the fact is that we won't know the full impact of this event until it ends. This is the difficult news for many to take. Many Australians and citizens across the globe may be concerned at the reports, and this is completely understandable. It is our national treasure, and people come from far away to experience what the reef has to offer.

I want to acknowledge, rather than disparage or discredit, our tourism operators. I want to acknowledge the work they're doing, because many of them are incredible custodians of the reef and spend more time out there than most. They also have a big stake in this. I want to thank them for their ongoing work during this period, being another set of eyes and ears on the water.

Of course, we know that there is no quick fix or silver bullet in this equation, but what this does highlight is the need for action on climate change. It is the biggest threat to our Great Barrier Reef and reefs across the world. It highlights the need not for motions in the Senate but for government actions. We are a government that has taken decisive action when it comes to climate change. In fact, as those in this chamber know, one of our first acts in government was to enshrine emissions reductions targets into legislation. We know that the most important thing that we can do right now is to deliver on those emissions reduction targets, to increase our renewable energy use and to ensure that we are taking action on climate change after 10 years of delay and denial under the previous government. We have rectified the appalling track record of climate action under the Liberals and Nationals. I am angry and saddened that we lost a decade under a government that were climate change denialists and that refused to accept the science. The science was always up for debate under the Liberal and National parties—it always was and it continues to be.

The science has been telling us for a while now that temperatures are rising, and here we are again having this debate. Of course, before the Liberal government, there were others in the chamber who tore down the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, again costing us valuable time. There were 10 years of delay and denial, assisted by those in the chamber who now cry and now call for action. Yet when they had the opportunity 10 years ago, they refused to take it. But now, under a Labor government, we are on a credible path to net zero and we are transitioning our economy to a low-carbon one. This is to give the reef the best chance to be healthy. It's a diverse ecosystem. We need to respond to the challenge of climate change, which is what we are doing.

We also need to ensure that there are effective management actions in place. In Australia, our reef is very well managed. The reef authority and AIMS are world-class. They need to be supported in the jobs that they do, which is exactly why our government delivered more than $163 million in last year's budget to ensure that AIMS remains at the forefront of marine science and continues developing innovative solutions to protect the reef. In partnership with the Queensland government, we're investing $4.7 billion to protect the reef's resilience. We're getting on with the job. We're working in catchments with farmers, traditional owners and scientists to improve the quality of the water that flows into the reef. We're doing practical things, like remediating stream banks to reduce nutrient run-off. We're controlling crown-of-thorns starfish, which feed on coral. The teams out on the water have had great success, and they're using the data they're receiving from this monitoring to change their management plan and react quickly. We're phasing out the use of gillnets in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area by mid-2027 and transitioning to more sustainable fishing practices. We know that the zoning legislation 20 years ago was controversial, but we know that it was important for the reef, because when you protect the marine park you protect the reef. Importantly, we're reforming Australia's environment laws—a critical piece of work that the previous government failed to acknowledge.

Beyond our shores, we've worked incredibly hard to restore our international credibility when it comes to climate change and the environment. We are among the best reef managers in the world, and we're proud to share that reputation. Last year, we had confirmation that the World Heritage Committee would not list the Great Barrier Reef as endangered, and, despite those opposite down this end of the chamber, this is a good outcome for the reef. It doesn't by any stretch mean that the work is over. It really is just the beginning. I reject accusations from those down the other end of the chamber.

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

It's a con job; a complete political con job.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just a moment please.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to you in silence, but you have to speak the whole way through my contribution.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Green, please take your seat. I remind the chamber that everyone deserves the respect of being heard in silence. Senator Whish-Wilson, I remind you of that. Senator Green, you have the call. Please continue.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's very uncomfortable for Senator Whish-Wilson to hear someone on this side of the chamber say this—that we should be working with our partners around the world, that we should be talking to UNESCO and that we should be working with them constructively. We have been accountable and transparent in the information that we have been giving not only to our partners at UNESCO but also to people around the world. We monitor and publish data on the reef like no other country in the entire world. To insinuate that there has been any attempt at deception is untrue and unfair to the incredible people who work on the reef every single day.

We know that we cannot act alone. Those down the end might want Australia to sit in isolation on this, but we want to work with those people around the world. We know that there has never been a more important or critical time. I know people around the country, particularly in Queensland, are eager to take practical action, so I have a really good suggestion for the dear senator down here: work with us and work with the people in Queensland to deliver on these actions, and that includes working with the Queensland government. The truth is that, leading into the rest of the year, we have a lot of work to do, and there is something that will put that work at risk. We need the Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, David Crisafulli, to rule out cutting funding to the joint management program, rule out repealing the water quality regulations, say that he supports the ban on destructive gillnet fishing and refuse to overturn the ban if his government is elected. We need bipartisanship not just here but also in Queensland on these important reef protection measures.

The biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef is climate change, but what we've seen over the last 10 years in this place is that the LNP is a close second. So what I would call on Queenslanders to do while they deal with this news is think carefully about who is protecting the reef and who is silent on it. We haven't heard much from David Crisafulli, and we hear things from the other side of the chamber all the time that deny the science around the Great Barrier Reef. I hope we don't hear the same things from the Leader of the Opposition in Queensland.

Our government is doing more than any other government has done to take action on climate change. We know that it's important for our energy transition. We know it's important for us to keep up with the rest of the world. We know it's important not to lose those opportunities when it comes to investing in renewable energy. But we also know that it's important to the Great Barrier Reef. We want the Great Barrier Reef to be there for generations to come because there are so many jobs in Queensland and around the country that rely on the Great Barrier Reef.

The LNP put the reef at risk in real terms and reputationally. Our government has turned that around, and we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to work in partnership with Queenslanders, with traditional owners, with scientists, with landholders and with tourism operators. We are working together in partnership to deliver the action required, and that's more than any motion in the Senate would ever achieve under those at the end of the chamber.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this notice of motion from Senator Whish-Wilson because it gives us an opportunity to have a real discussion, a real debate about what is happening in Australia and in the world, and to talk about practical measures, not ideology. If I can, I will start with the Great Barrier Reef. Once again, there's this hysterical kind of discussion. It's about only ever wanting to listen to one side of what they hear. The latest bleaching has shown that, of the 3,000 estimated reefs across the Great Barrier Reef, only 300 reefs have been surveyed. Not all areas have been surveyed; only shallow reefs have been surveyed, not deepwater ones. Not all of them have been bleached yet, if we were to listen to these hysterical words from a Tasmanian senator, this is a disaster.

In actual fact, we are coming off record coral cover over the last two years. This is something that the Greens don't want to acknowledge and won't acknowledge. Roger Beeden, the chief scientist at GBRMPA, in a press release this month, said:

It is important to note, that the heat stress has not been even across the Reef, and the coral bleaching observed is variable.

…   …   …

The Reef has demonstrated its capacity to recover from previous coral bleaching events …

And the AIMS report states that bleaching in 2021-22 did not result in widespread mortality. People must remember that bleaching doesn't automatically mean death. It's great to see this news, because the Great Barrier Reef is one of the best-managed reefs in the world.

I listened carefully to the last contribution. There was never any acknowledgement of the work done in the last term of government. There is the contribution, too—and this is something that Labor people will never talk about because they have overseen this in Queensland for the last 30 of 35 years—of the impact on the Great Barrier Reef of sewage in water streams. It is always farmers who are damaging the Great Barrier Reef. They pour all of their attention and effort into that, but they won't look at funding and supporting councils to improve their sewerage systems and do some practical measures.

What is happening on the Great Barrier Reef is not the hysterical crisis that the Greens would have you believe. I was just thinking back over my lifetime. We had 'the end of the world is nigh' due to pollution in the 1970s. Guess what? Human ingenuity and technology cleaned up the air. We had the hole in the ozone layer. That was going to kill us. Guess what? That's closed over. We've had global cooling, the ice ages and global warming. Everything is unprecedented and people are exhausted. They're exhausted from the hysteria and they're desperate to have balanced media coverage that provides an opportunity for humans to stay positive.

I am positive. I am positive that, over thousands of years, humans have innovated. Humans have improved on their condition. Humans are always able to come up with a solution, and I feel confident that we will continue to do that. That's what I tell my children, because I am positive about the future. I'm also positive about a future that has fossil fuels. It's shocking, isn't it? But I feel we have a moral imperative to continue to provide electricity, not just in this country but around the world.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is this serious?

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened in respectful silence to others. It is no surprise—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McDonald, please sit down. Can I just remind, yet again, those down in the back corner, the Greens, that others in this chamber listened in silence to your contribution, Senator Whish-Wilson.

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

I didn't say anything.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And if you intend to make a contribution, Senator Steele-John, I'm sure you would expect the same respect in return. Senator McDonald, you have the call.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a responsibility to provide electricity, not just here but around the world, and particularly in those nations where they're currently forced to turn to burning fuel or burning dung—using the most expensive and polluting methods that they can get their hands on in order to have the basics.

A specialist in Queensland told me a story that reminded me of this just the other day. He and his family emigrated from Kolkata. They took his younger brother to the hospital one evening, and at the hospital, which was experiencing intermittent power, they weren't able to do a scan of this child. They weren't able to examine him, and they sent him home with the family, where he died. He died of appendicitis—a burst appendix. This is shocking. So, when he came to Australia and studied and became a specialist, that is a reminder that electricity—reliable, affordable electricity—saves lives.

And we will only be able to do that with the continuation of coal-fired power and gas plants for the foreseeable future, because whilst there is this belief that we will be able to transition to renewable energy, whilst the Labor government has just agreed that China will be able to dump wind turbines on our shores, we do not have the technical capacity, and everybody agrees with that. There is nobody who will tell you that there is battery storage that will provide more than 20 minutes at the best. There is nobody who will genuinely tell you that hydrogen, renewable energy or batteries are in any way able to provide reliable and affordable electricity to Australia or anywhere else in the world in the foreseeable future, and so I do believe we have a moral imperative to continue providing affordable, reliable electricity.

And let's not forget that in Australia it is the big three that pay for us to have the first-world lifestyle that we have—the big three gorillas of iron ore, gas and coal, and the only difference is the order in which they appear. It is their royalties, their company taxes, the PAYG taxes from the people they employ, and their community contributions that pay for all of the services that we enjoy. The very idea that we would be driving off investment in those industries is economic vandalism. It would be disastrous for this country—40 per cent of all company tax that pays for all of the services and the amenities that we all enjoy, and 1.1 million Australian jobs, jobs that will not readily transfer to polishing solar panels.

Only gas will prevent us having blackouts as early as next winter. That's shocking, isn't it? Next winter we are projected to have blackouts, and that is from the AEMO report that came out yesterday. We will have shortfalls from 2026. That is not 10 years away; that is a heartbeat away. Labor has been in government for two years and our gas shortfall is coming ever closer—nothing except fund the EDO to attack resource projects.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, because you didn't do anything about it for 10 years.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection from Senator O'Farrell because he is so wrong—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Farrell, on a point of order?

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At least the senator could call me by my correct name. My correct name is Farrell, not O'Farrell.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Farrell. Senator McDonald, you have the call. You may continue.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise that you misheard me. I do very clearly know that your name is Senator Farrell. Minister Farrell, the reason you are wrong is because every well must be maintained, and the lack of investment and lack of flow in the Bass Strait—one of our great reserves—means we are now down 50 per cent on production in those places since you came to government, and there are no new projects coming to market. We have great projects like Senex—not approved under your government. We have great domestic projects like Tamboran and in the Beetaloo—not approved under your government. We have offshore projects that have been delayed because they have not been approved under your government. This has got nothing to do with anybody else but your government and your failure to act to bring more gas to the market. It will result in fewer Australian jobs, and we are seeing that right now—Sealy International, 125 jobs; Sorbent, 70 jobs now going offshore to Indonesia. We can give thanks that those companies were able to survive COVID but they won't survive under a Labor government. That is shocking.

There is risk of more jobs going if Labor is not prepared to fix the gas market. It is ludicrous that the Greens are talking about cutting more gas because this isn't about an ideology; this is about people. This is about Australians—mums and dads—sitting around the table, deciding how they are going to earn a crust, put food on the table and live their lives. Because coal and gas aren't just energy; they are manufacturing. Industry, steel, glass, bricks, everything, can only be generated from the energy that these things are bring.

I welcome the opportunity to have these discussions. Because the hysterical urgency coming from Minister Bowen, these damning policies will mean Australians would have fewer jobs, less manufacturing, higher costs of living, lower quality of life. These are coming like a train. We have been warning for two years about what is happening in the gas market and now those warnings are coming to fruition.

I'm shocked that, as a responsible government, they are not heeding the advice of Treasury, of other officials, of independent agencies like AEMO. This is not me saying it; this is your very own agencies ringing the bell—warning, warning, warning, we are going onto the rocks!

The hysterical comments from the Greens will impact Australians in a worse outcome than you can imagine. We used to have a balanced debate in this place but now the hysterical activism, the lack of widespread newspapers and news shows means that Australians are having to resort to getting their media from social media, from the clips that the Greens will be taking from their motion today. That is what they are doing. This is a fundraising activity, this motion. It is not about addressing the rushed policies that are facing Australia and the very real danger and damage that these policies are doing to us all.

I'm not sure what else we can do apart from warn, tell Australians. In the case of the Queensland election, another Queensland senator was trying to appeal to Queenslanders to think about their vote. I do the same because it is only with us continuing to do the great job that we do in mining, in gas production—we have a responsibility to the world to produce the lowest emission, highest calorific coal and clean gas that we do to assist our allies and our neighbours with not burning dirtier fuel. That's what increases world emissions. If that's what your biggest worry is then you should be encouraging Australian mining—mining that pays royalties and taxes, employs millions of Australians and ensures that we have a great quality of life.

I don't support this motion. It will be no surprise by this point. It is a pointless waste of effort apart from the fact that we get to talk about it. The Great Barrier Reef is not dead and dying, as the Greens would have you believe. New coal, oil and gas mines are actually useful and a moral imperative for this country for the rest of the world. I don't support this motion, I can't support this motion and I know that Australians across this country are begging the Greens to stop their hysterical arguments, calm down and assist them with living the best lives that they can.

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

Once again those who worship the sky god of global boiling are using their religion to scare the public into holding the line on the great climate boiling scam. Is it still global boiling or have we now moved to global scalding? This fearmongering, this scaring, as I've been explaining for many years, involves taking money from hardworking Australians and giving it to parasitic billionaires to fix the climate.

Senator Whish-Wilson's latest motion reheats an old, debunked scare: the Great Barrier Reef is dying. In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article titled '"And then we wept": Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached'. In 2022 the Washington Post ran an article titled, in part, 'Great Barrier Reef has the most coral in decades'. In 2024 they ran an article titled 'Fatal heatwave strikes unspoiled swath of Great Barrier Reef'. It went on to say:

Water temperature data suggests the toll of this event could approach that of 2016, when some 30% of the reef's corals died after suffering through what were then unprecedented levels of heat stress.

Can't they see it's cyclical?

Hang on. Wasn't that 93 per cent? No. That's just the mainstream media scare figure used at the time to appease their owners, the same predatory billionaires that profit from the global boiling scam. It was never an accurate figure, never credible, yet the Greens repeatedly peddled it.

In summary, the reef had a serious bleaching event in 2016, and within a few years the coral extent was back to normal. By the way, the first scientifically recorded bleaching was in 1926. Scientific records show that bleaching has been a natural part of the Great Barrier Reef cycles and other reef cycles for millennia. That is fact. This is not some esoteric discussion. These Chicken Little claims from the Greens have consequences. Scare stories about the reef dying cause tourists, including international tourists, to cancel their holidays on the Great Barrier Reef, destroying livelihoods in Great Barrier Reef communities on the Queensland east coast. People instead go to a country where the politicians are not scaring off the tourists. Jobs are lost every time the Greens use the Great Barrier Reef as a political football. There's not even any science behind their claims.

At times the reef can be a naturally fragile ecosystem. We know that. Certain naturally occurring events can impact it. The greatest danger for the barrier reef is flooding. Tropical cyclones dump fresh water into a river catchment system that carries rainwater hundreds of kilometres onto the Great Barrier Reef. Freshwater plumes kill saltwater coral polyps, and the event is declared a bleaching event—all natural, all cyclical, quite common.

What did we have three months ago in Queensland? A severe flood event—entirely natural. What do we have now? Coral bleaching—entirely natural. Don't take my word for it. Please read James Cook University's article titled 'Back-to-back cyclones and flood plume impacts on the Great Barrier Reef', which confirmed freshwater coral bleaching was recorded along the reef.

Now the climate boiling scammers are trying to blame this on natural climate variability, so let me give you the inconvenient truth about that. I want you to reference the study titled 'Great Barrier Reef study shows how reef copes with rapid sea level-rise' from the University of Sydney website. I'll publish the link. To quote from the study:

Using unprecedented analysis of 12 new drilled reef cores with data going back more than 8,000 years, the study shows that there have been three distinct phases of reef growth since the end of the Pleistocene era about 11,000 years ago.

It goes on to say:

'We wanted to understand past reef resilience to multiple environmental stresses during the formation of the modern reef,' said the lead author Kelsey Sanborn, a PhD student at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.

It continues:

The study was an international collaboration published in Sedimentary Geology, which revealed a period around 8,000 and 7,000 years ago when the reef growth slowed as it was exposed to multiple stressors, including likely increases in sediment and nutrient flux on the reef.

I wonder what could cause the sediment and nutrient flux that damaged the reef 8,000 years ago. Well, it can't be coal fired power stations, it can't be internal combustion engines or people living in freestanding homes on quarter-acre blocks, and it certainly couldn't have been air travel. What could it be? Of course! I have it: eating meat! That's it! If the local Aboriginal population had just stopped eating red meat and instead grew soybeans, those tropical storms would not have dumped nutrient-rich floodwaters onto the reef.

Study co-author Associate Professor Jody Webster said:

We need to understand the past in order to predict the future. This paper and Kelsey's broader research examine how sea level, surface temperature, sediment in the water, nutrient influx and energy inputs into the reef system affect its vulnerability to environmental change.

It goes on:

The reef system survives because of a delicate balance these environmental factors.

All natural.

Whenever the balance of the reef is disturbed, a bleaching event occurs. It's entirely natural. It's in a symbiotic relationship with other organisms. There's no doubt that when an unusually hot day corresponds to an unusually low tide, the reef will bleach, and it will bleach from a cyclone event and many other disturbances. That reminds me, I went scuba diving with some media off Keppel Island. We said, 'See the corals recovering from a cyclone.' The journalist said, 'But you haven't seen the real bleaching a thousand kilometres north.' There was a thousand kilometres of reef between where we were, with the healthy reef, and their claimed bleaching event. They just ignore the healthy reef.

For the Greens to use mother nature to promote their climate change scam is wrong—it's utterly wrong. For reef researchers to pretend reef damage is due to climate boiling and then ask for more money to research climate change is wrong. It's dishonest and it's scientific fraud. The truth is that the ocean is warmed primarily from the sun, with a secondary contribution from geothermal activity—fact. The atmosphere—the thing being blamed for heating up and bleaching the reef—only warms the top millimetre or so of the ocean surface. That's not enough to cause any harm—and, by the way, we can see that in the seasonal impact.

The climate boiling scammers can blame their sky god of warming all they like. They can demand large homes, big cars, aeroplanes, cattle, sheep, clothing, cheap power and so much more be sacrificed on the altar of their climate boiling beliefs. Saying a lie does not make the claimed science real. Repeating a lie doesn't make the claimed science real. Our weather patterns are normal—entirely natural—and so are the patterns on the reef.

If the Greens want to be useful, they should campaign against wind turbines—the installation of which requires whole tops of mountains being blown off mountains across northern Queensland right now, disturbing sediment and arsenic that flow through underground aquifers and winds up on the Great Barrier Reef, making these natural flood events even worse.

One Nation care about the natural environment because we value the natural environment. That's just one of the many reasons why we oppose wind turbines in pristine bushland and, for that matter, near human beings. We oppose industrial solar on farmland and on bushland. We oppose national parks being carved up for power lines, especially the Snowy 2.0 abomination. And we oppose land clearing of old-growth forests for any purpose, including grazing. One Nation is now the party of true environmentalism. And the Greens? Well, they're the party of promoting the political agendas and the pockets of parasitic billionaires over the best interests of the natural environment. The Greens peddle the United Nations World Economic Forum's antihuman agenda, which is in turn based on a lie—a false assumption. That lie, that false assumption, is that human civilisation and the environment are mutually exclusive. That is the opposite of reality.

The reality is that, for human civilisation to have a future, we must have a healthy natural environment. History over the last 170 years shows that the health of the environment depends on human civilisation because industrial civilisation minimises human impact on the natural environment. What has human civilisation produced that is so beneficial for the environment? High-energy, low-cost, ultrareliable hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. Before these hydrocarbon fuels, humans needed whale oil for lighting, killing whales. Before these hydrocarbon fuels, heating and cooking needed timber from chopped down trees. The area of land in the developed continents covered by forest over the last 100 years has increased by 30 per cent because we're no longer chopping down trees for cooking and heating. The best friend of whales and the best friend of forests is hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.

As a servant to the fine people of Queensland and Australia, I cherish human progress. I cherish human flourishing. I cherish hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. I admire human progress and human initiative. I appreciate human progress.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This great ancient continent that we share contains upon its shores, among its lands and in its oceans some of the great natural wonders of our planet. We have heard during the life of this parliament—and I'm sure we'll hear about it again in the course of this debate—about the stewardship and the care for country of First Nations people, who have brought and guided the land through the longest continuing human culture on this planet. For tens of thousands of years, the unique biodiverse regions of this ancient continent were kept in balance and nurtured life. Our oceans and rivers teemed with life. In the last 200 years or so of European occupation and exploitation of this ancient continent so many of these wonders have been brought to the brink.

Senator Whish-Wilson brought to the chamber tonight an opportunity to discuss a reality and a fact. The fact is that the burning of fossil fuels—of coal, oil and gas—in Australia and across the world brings us to a moment right now when the best scientists in the world are telling us that the year we have just lived through, 2023, was the hottest on record by far. The great reefs of this continent, the crown jewels of our oceans, are dying. They're bleaching. They're being swept away.

In the last eight years alone, the Great Barrier Reef has bleached no fewer than six times, and the link between these catastrophic events and the burning of coal, oil and gas is indisputable. Yet, from Queensland right across to the coastline of Western Australia, we have Labor governments at a state level, a Labor government now in the national offices of this parliament, a Labor prime minister and a Labor environment minister not only failing to protect these precious wonders but failing to work with those First Nations peoples, who for countless generations stewarded and supported and sung that country. In fact, these administrations are actively enabling the destruction of these reefs and actively enabling these natural wonders to be swept away, robbing future generations of the opportunity to swim in them, to walk on them and to sit within them and reflect upon what it means to be human and share a moment on this planet together.

Right now in Western Australia, along our glorious Kimberley coastline, we have a Labor government at the state level working to promote the business interests of a massive gas corporation, Woodside Energy, which thinks it runs our state and our politics. Why does it think this? Because it does. Donations given by Woodside Energy buy the support of the Liberal and Labor parties of Western Australia for whatever Woodside wants. Whatever Woodside Energy wants, it gets in Western Australia, and it gets it because it donates. It is state capture, pure and simple, and it's sick. In Queensland we have a state government which seems to want praise from the rest of the nation for doing what anyone would reasonably consider was a bit below the bare minimum. It pretends to be saving the Great Barrier Reef while continuing to approve the very coal, oil and gas projects that are destroying it.

Well, the people have had enough. Despite what the Woodsides of this nation believe and despite what the premiers, prime ministers and environment ministers which some companies buy may believe, these precious places are not the playthings of corporations. They are not assets to be stripped, mined and sold. They are ours, collectively, and held in trust. When threatened by politicians and corporations, the people together will defend them in the name of their inherent right to exist and the right of the future generations to glory in them.

In Western Australia we have a proud history of protecting our glorious coastline, particularly from Woodside. In 2013 we came together to defeat the James Price Point proposal, and, once again, we are coming together to defeat the monstrous Burrup Hub proposal. If it requires people to go to jail, to put their bodies and lives on the line to block this project, they will and they are, and I pay tribute to them tonight. If it requires people from Fremantle and people from Perth and people from Esperance and people from Bunbury and people from Broome and Carnarvon to come together to defeat these projects, they will and they are.

Over in Western Australia there is right now a coalition building, the Save Scott Reef coalition. Backed by our environment groups, backed by our environmental defenders, people are coming together to defend our magnificent coastline, particularly from the elements of the Burrup Hub proposal, the Browse and the other elements of the Woodside proposal which would see Scott Reef put at risk of catastrophic oil pollution. That would see the pygmy blue whales that call Scott Reef home put at risk, and the green sea turtles—the wonders of which are listed by federal environment law as being vulnerable and at risk.

The national environment minister has within their power the ability to deny approval for the expansion of the North West Shelf and the expansion of the Browse offshore gas field project and they must use those powers to stop this project. We cannot continue to approve gas and coal projects in this nation which we know will push our environment to the brink—which would push us over the edge into two degrees of warming. We cannot do it. The community look to political spaces to take that action, and, if those spaces are captured by corporate interests, we will take that action regardless. We are not going to sit by while corporations destroy these natural wonders and push our planet to the brink.

If discussion of these topics makes people in this chamber feel uncomfortable, well, I have a plain and simple message: get used to it, because the Greens are not going to stop. The community is not going to stop. We will not relent in our defence of the natural world, the precious places, the cultural heritage of First Nations people. We will not relent in pushing back against the corporations that seek to buy our democracies nationally and at the state level, and we will not relent in calling out the hypocrisy and the dishonesty at the heart of a party, the Australian Labor Party, that would put itself forward as a defender of the environment while simultaneously approving projects which destroy the environment.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The one thing that surprises me about this motion, as someone who lives near the Great Barrier Reef—just a few kilometres away from the catchment area—is there's been no real mention of what's been happening on the reef in the last few years. Just under two years ago, back in August 2022, even the ABC could bring themselves to admit, somewhat reluctantly, that, in the headline of a news story, 'Great Barrier Reef coral cover at record levels after mass-bleaching events'. This news article was referring to a study, released in mid-2022 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, which showed that coral on the Great Barrier Reef had gone to a level not seen in records at any time before. The records only go back to the mid-1980s, although that's now getting on for 40 years—we didn't really measure it much before then—but going all the way back, coral had recovered to its record levels.

I note that when Senator Whish-Wilson was bringing his evidence forward to support his motion, he really only went back to the 1980s in terms of coral-bleaching events and what's happened since then. They are a natural part of any coral reef. It does get different temperatures at different times and, yes, a bleaching event does kill a lot of coral. But, as clearly shown in the last few years, coral then grows back, often stronger and healthier and better—in the same sort of way that pastures do. Indeed, good pasture management will normally mean the intentional destruction of the pastures through fire management techniques that go back to our Aboriginal ancestors, that then help ensure the grass is even healthier and thicker and better and more resilient going forward. It's not that much different to coral, although of course we don't manage it in an intentional way; it's a natural process that always occurs.

So, the evidence is in. The science is in. There is record coral cover on the reef, and yet that's not mentioned by the other side. It's a clear problem for their argument. Their argument is that the world's been warming—and I accept that; the global temperature has been warming, that's clear—and that will lead to catastrophic results for reefs around the world. But then you've got this contrasting data point that, despite that warming, our coral cover has been at record levels. How do you explain that? There has been no coherent attempt from those on the other side that want to support this motion to explain the inconsistency in their own argument and the real-world evidence that is clearly out there that even the ABC admits to now. It looks like another bleaching event is emerging now, but, again, this is part of a natural process that occurs.

It's a bit strange. Senator Whish-Wilson's motion mentions that if we get to two degrees Celsius then 99 per cent of the world's coral reefs will die. I've had a look at these studies. It just doesn't seem to compute. Can someone explain to me here in this debate how we could have a situation where the world's warmed something like 1.1 or 1.2 degrees Celsius since the preindustrial times baseline that's used—we're getting close to the 1.5 figure and, yes, the Greens are worrying we'll get to two degrees Celsius—so it's warmed more than half to get to the two degrees threat level, and yet we have coral reefs set at record levels. And apparently, for the other half of it, we'll tip over a point but 99 per cent will die. That doesn't seem right. And when something doesn't seem quite right, it's right to question that. It's right to question whether this is being used to pursue some other agenda and is not, in fact, a genuine attempt to protect the environment.

People where I live and the people of Central and North Queensland are sick and tired of being used as a political football. It's our livelihoods. It's our communities that people are constantly using to kick around for their own political purposes, having almost zero knowledge of how the system works, where things even are and what the impact is going to be.

I was listening to the speaker before me, my colleague Senator Steele-John, and he's now complaining that the Woodside gas project will apparently kill the Great Barrier Reef. The Woodside gas project is on the other side of the country from the Great Barrier Reef, but it will now apparently kill the reef.

It reminded me—not that they'll mention this debate—that a few years ago the Greens senators and Greens activists were saying exactly the same thing about the Adani Carmichael mine. That project just touches the Great Barrier Reef catchment area. It's right on the edge of it. It's 400 kilometres away from the coast, but some of the water from the Carmichael mine would, in theory, make its way across 400 kilometres into the ocean. We were all told back then that this mine was going to kill the reef. It was going to be the end of it. It was all over. Lots of the Greens propaganda almost suggested that the mine was kind of in the reef and it was almost going to be digging up coral. In fact, some did, because there was a related ports development to the project at one stage, so they almost suggested that coral was going to be dug up by this port development. That was never the case.

Anyway, the mine has now started. The mine has been going now for more than two years, and you would have thought, given the Greens' previous claims about the Adani mine, that two years on they would bring evidence to this chamber about how this 10 million tonnes per annum mine at Carmichael has damaged the reef. Where's the evidence? Now you're saying the Woodside project is going to damage the reef. It's not even close to the reef, but your argument is that it creates carbon emissions that then cause the world to warm and damage the reef. Well, you were saying exactly the same thing about the Adani Carmichael mine. It's now up and running. Where is your evidence that this mine has caused damage to the Great Barrier Reef?

It's totally absurd that this project alone would cause that kind of damage, but it is used to try and stop the jobs and economic opportunities that have been generated by that mine. That mine now employs 2,000 northern Queenslanders in good, permanent, secure, local jobs. They've only got people from Townsville and Rockhampton working on that mine. There's a mining services contract in Mackay. It's of enormous benefit to our regions, having that mine there. But now it's forgotten, because its use for the Greens has expired so they've forgotten about the people of North and Central Queensland. They've moved on to the next project that they're trying to stop—I hope unsuccessfully, as well.

I think it's important to pick up one part of the motion that is very misleading, which is the point about the Great Barrier Reef itself generating 64,000 jobs for our country. I'm a huge supporter of our tourism industry. It does great things for our country and it's a small business dominated industry. They, too, are sick and tired of the Greens using the Great Barrier Reef as a political football, because one thing that keeps people from coming to the Great Barrier Reef is the perception around the world that it's somehow dead, buried and gone, with nothing to see anymore, despite it having record coral cover and being beautiful—and you should come and see it. Constantly, local businesses complain about the rhetoric from the Greens and how it damages their industry, but the Greens don't seem to care. Regarding that figure of 64,000 jobs, which gets used a lot by the Greens, it's quite important to look at where it comes from. They're trying to use that as a figure to say, 'Tourism is 64,000 jobs and coalmining in Queensland is about 50,000. Therefore, we can lose the coalmining industry and it won't matter'—even though 50,000 jobs is still a lot.

Let's look at where that figure comes from. It comes from a Deloitte report that was commissioned nearly 10 years ago. If you dig into the details of that Deloitte report and how they estimate those jobs—in fairness to Deloitte, it's actually very hard to estimate the economic contribution of the tourism industry because it's not really separately reported in our data and it's tied up with hotels and restaurants and other venues that are not only used by tourists—they used travel data regarding people travelling to anywhere in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area.

If you travel to Proserpine you're counted as potentially contributing to the Great Barrier Reef economy. Yes, a lot of people travelling to Proserpine would be doing that. It's a gateway to the Whitsundays and to Airlie Beach. You've got a good chance of going to the reef if you're flying to Proserpine. However, if you fly to Moranbah, for example—which is smack bang in the middle of the country's biggest coal basin—you're also counted as a tourist going to see the Great Barrier Reef, even though Moranbah is nearly 300 kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef. I'm not sure if Senator Whish-Wilson has gone to Moranbah Airport, but you're probably not going to find too many people dressed in scuba gear there. There'll be a lot of people in very brightly coloured uniforms, in hi-vis, through Moranbah Airport. It's not exactly salubrious. There's not really an airport lounge at Moranbah Airport. You're out in the open on steel benches, often in the heat, waiting to get your flight back home. That's Moranbah Airport. It's a working town. It's a massive economic contributor to this community.

But Deloitte—good luck to them; I don't know where these economists or other people were based, and I don't know if they ever went to Moranbah—counted a proportion or what I think was a quarter of the travel to Moranbah as contributing to the tourism economy of the Great Barrier Reef. It's the most absurd thing you've ever heard. They even counted half the travellers to Mackay and Townsville as contributing to the Great Barrier Reef. Anybody who knows knows that's just absolutely absurd.

There'll be some people who fly to Mackay and Townsville that are going to see the reef. But guess what? There are other people that just fly to see their family in Mackay and Townsville. There are other people that just fly in to work, to do business or to go to and from the hospital in Brisbane, which they have to do because the hospital health services are woeful in these regions. That's what we'd like to see; we'd like to see that fixed. Do that for us in north and Central Queensland instead of just using us as a political football.

But that was just absurd, that report, and it should never be used as a basis for any kind of argument, especially an argument to try and say that we should shut down one industry, in coal or gas, to try and help another one, in tourism. That's not how you grow business. We don't have to shut down some industries to help others. In fact there's a great symbiotic relationship between the mining industry and the tourism industry in north and Central Queensland because the mining industry does bring people to north and Central Queensland. It brings people there to work and to live, and, unfortunately now, a lot of the tourism that occurs in the Great Barrier Reef is local. It's becoming increasingly local because we're pricing ourselves out of the international market. It's a very expensive destination, to come to the Great Barrier Reef now, with our regulation and red tape and a lack of investment, partly, because of that. We are really struggling to compete against the likes of Thailand and other areas with coral reefs where scuba diving is a lot cheaper.

But the one marker that we do have that will come to the reef is those locals, because it's easy to get to, you don't have to fly and people can just own a boat and get out there. That's a big part of the tourism market now. The more people we can bring to north and Central Queensland either through a mining job, agricultural developments or whatever it might be, the more that will help the tourism industry because there are more people living there that will just go to the beach for their weekends rather than on a long international holiday.

For the final point I want to make on all of this, as I say, I accept the world has been warming, but the question is: what do we do about it? What exactly do the Greens seem to think will happen if we shut down our coal and gas industry? That's what they're saying in this motion. They want us to walk away from our own production of coal and gas, and their implicit assumption in that is it will save the Great Barrier Reef; everything will be right and fine with the Great Barrier Reef. Nowhere do they mention in this motion or otherwise what the Australian contribution to the world's coal and gas production is.

It is insinuated and implied, as I think a lot of Australians think, that Australia is this very large coal producer and we dominate world coal markets or gas markets. Nothing could be further from the truth. We produce around five per cent of the world's coal. That's it. China produces about half of the world's coal. We're five per cent. For gas, it's even a little bit less. For gas, we're just four per cent of the world's gas production. You could shut down all of our coalmines and gas facilities, stop the LNG projects in Western Australia and basically kill our manufacturing industry if you do that as well, and we wouldn't make a single difference. The effect on the reef will be no different at all. That production will almost certainly be displaced to other countries. The Greens and others will still want to consume the goods that are made from coal and gas products, including scuba gear. That's made from petrochemicals. Most scuba gear would be made from petroleum products.

So what's the point of it? Your flippers, your wetsuits will all be made overseas then, from somewhere else, using gas from somewhere else. It won't protect the reef at all. So I think, if we're serious about protecting the reef, we have to start from the position of getting our facts right. The fundamental reason why I oppose this motion is that the Greens simply have not got their facts right. They haven't got their facts right on the economic contribution of tourism in north and Central Queensland, they haven't got the facts right on the state of the Great Barrier Reef at the moment and they don't have the facts right on Australia's contribution to this issue and therefore what we should do about it.

But, most of all, I think what's important is we actually get some more voices in this debate of people who are interested in the Great Barrier Reef and want to protect it. Please try to listen to the people who live and work there. They do care about it. We do love it. It's a fantastic place to be. We'd love for you to come up and visit us or maybe move up to us. We're very open-minded and hospitable people. We have actually had a lot of Victorians move up in the last couple of years. Every second person I meet in Yeppoon these days is from Melbourne, and it's great. It's great to have those Victorians come and share the wonder of our region, the Great Barrier Reef, with us. But we do get a little bit frustrated by people wanting to make broad conclusions and make political decisions that impact people's real lives without having any real local knowledge of the issue themselves.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak against this motion. For too long, there has been way too much fearmongering about the Great Barrier Reef, especially in regard to bleaching, which I'll touch on in a minute. But I want to refer to the Great Barrier Reef inquiry. It was the first inquiry I ever participated in, and my first question in that inquiry was to the head of AIMS, the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The question I asked was a very simple one. I said, 'Do you have a centralised database of all the health KPIs relating to the Great Barrier Reef since the early 1980s'—because that's when scientists started looking at the reef in detail—'that demonstrates that the health of the reef is dying?' It took about five or six minutes of the usual bureaucratic obfuscation. All I wanted was a 'yes' or 'no'. Eventually, we got out of the head of the Australian Institute of Marine Science a 'no'. Here's the thing: the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of alarmism going on with the reef. There's a lot of money being wasted on scientific research that isn't being properly collated by the reef. There is no data at all that demonstrates that the health of the reef has been dying over the last four decades, dating back to the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Coral cover is being measured. It's only measured about every five years, and the latest update on coral cover, last year, showed that the coral cover on the reef was at record highs. That's got nothing to do with climate change or anything like that, because one of the most toxic impacts on coral is actually fresh water, believe it or not. Anyone who's got an aquarium at home knows you have either a saltwater tank or a freshwater tank. If it's a saltwater tank, you've got to keep it just right or the fish will die, as well as the coral. So the reason why the Great Barrier Reef is at record cover is that there have been very few cyclones—touch wood—up in North Queensland over the last decade. We've had a relatively stable last decade. In the period just before that we had Cyclone Yasi and another big cyclone that really wiped out the reef, Cyclone Larry. What you get with those big cyclones are two things: you obviously get the cyclone itself, which rips up the reef, and then you get enormous dumps of fresh water. They go down those massive North Queensland rivers that we love so much, and that fresh water flows out onto the reef and then kills the coral even more. So that's got nothing to do with climate change or anything like that; that is just how the world works. It demonstrates the lack of evidence and systemic record keeping that is so typical of government bureaucracy. It's all fearmongering and very little facts and figures.

Later that afternoon, we had the Queensland natural resource department come in, and I asked them another question. I asked them, 'What is your margin of error in regard to your measuring equipment when you actually measure concentrations of'—I forget what it was—'nitrogen and other potential contaminants on the reef?' Their margin of error was between 60 and 90 per cent. Not only that—they measured this water below where the farmland was, but they didn't have another gauge above the farmland up in the high areas up on the Great Dividing Range, where you get a lot of dissolved nitrogen leaching out of the soil and all the leaf structure that's on our Great Dividing Range. Of course, I'm thinking here of Eungella and Chalumbin and all of these beautiful areas up on our Great Dividing Range that are soon to get levelled in the name of climate change. We're going to destroy the environment to protect the environment. If anyone wants to make sense of that, good luck with that.

I think it's worth pointing out the amount of misinformation that's going on based on no evidence whatsoever, but we really can't have a discussion about the misinformation on the Great Barrier Reef without talking about Professor Terry Hughes. This guy has been seeding such misinformation that it deserves to be called out. I'm glad that Senator Whish-Wilson has given me an opportunity to speak about this, because I'd forgotten to raise it in the chamber. It needs to be put on record that Professor Hughes, Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, told a Senate inquiry in 2014 about the rapid decline of the Great Barrier Reef. He told the inquiry:

… coal dust has already spread hundreds of kilometres from coal ports and … it has now accumulated everywhere on the Great Barrier Reef and not just the dredging sites or near the ports themselves. It is exceeding toxic levels in nearshore locations.

…   …   …

I think this new evidence is sufficient that recently issued permits to undertake dredging should be revoked.

These statements were based upon a study that was proven to be wrong. A very well qualified CSIRO scientist Dr Simon Apte went back and examined the study Professor Terry Hughes relied on and demonstrated that the coal dust concentrations on the Great Barrier Reef were exaggerated by 1,000 per cent. Professor Terry Hughes is considered a so-called expert and yet has been one of the chief alarmists in spreading misinformation about the reef. It has got to stop because, as a result of all of this alarmism, the Queensland government has now mandated that farmers who live in the Great Barrier Reef basin have to implement a Great Barrier Reef plan, in order to prove that their farms aren't allowing sediment to run off onto the Great Barrier Reef. It needs to be said, as I know my good friend Professor Peter Ridd has said many times, that the amount of sediment that comes out of the rivers is nothing compared to the amount of sediment that gets washed up through the oceanic currents.

The Great Barrier Reef basin is huge. It runs from Gympie, on the Mary River, down south all the way out to Emerald. Emerald is a long, long way inland. It's a good three-hour drive from Rockhampton. If you're a farmer on the north side of Emerald, the water will run into the Belyando River, which then runs into the Herbert River. For these farmers that are nowhere near the reef, the idea that someone running a few cattle up near Emerald will somehow cause run-off into the reef is just absurd. These guys are expected to go and get a Great Barrier Reef plan that proves that their run-off isn't going to destroy the reef. This plan costs them thousands of dollars, and they're liable to be fined up to $200,000 if they don't meet the requirements of the Great Barrier Reef plan.

This is just another example of all the green tape that is put onto our farmers. I can tell you I've spoken with many farmers. I'll mention one in particular, Mr Ramon Jayo, who has recently become Mayor of Hinchinbrook Shire Council. He's a proud cane farmer. He is incredibly proud of his farm. I've had the pleasure of meeting him on a number of inquiries—and I always stop in and see him, and we have lunch when I'm on my wombat trip. He is a top bloke and a great North Queensland character. He's the sort of bloke that, if I hadn't given up drinking when I became a senator, I would get on the turps with him. But I digress.

As Ramon has said on many occasions, he does not want any run-off on his property because he wants to keep the soil on his property. He doesn't want erosion. They've got tanks there where they capture the run-off. He says they've got fish living in those ponds they have for their sediment run-off and they're very healthy and vibrant. The thing that concerns him is that some of these mangrove swamps are now so cluttered, because of the World Heritage environmental laws that stop the clearing up of mangroves, that the water can't get away in these floods and it's causing severe flooding in his community. Yet again, all of this misinformation around the reef is having a massive impact on the hardworking farmers up in Queensland, and especially in the Great Barrier Reef basin.

I want to go back to the topic of bleaching, which we hear about all the time. Yet again, the theme is recordkeeping. I'll say it again—and I'll say it a hundred times while I'm still a senator—the recordkeeping and the quality assurance of our bureaucracy in Canberra are shocking. It is pathetic. I'll explain the way bleaching is recorded on the Great Barrier Reef. There are trawlers that have nets about five metres wide on each side, and they run up about a 200 metre area—so, all up, an area of about 2,000 square metres. If they detect any bleaching whatsoever in that little run, then the whole area is deemed to be bleached. So, if you've got even one square metre out of the 2,000 square metres that might have a bit of coral bleaching, the entire area is recorded as being bleached. This is clearly overstating the amount of bleaching that occurs, and the scientists know it. The scientists at AIMS or wherever know this, but they won't actually be honest about what's going on, because, if they do that, the funding will dry up.

Over $1.2 billion has been given to people whose interest is in claiming that the Great Barrier Reef is dying because they then get more money to, supposedly, save the reef. I've got a friend who is a scientist—not on the Great Barrier Reef—who said something interesting. He said that, if he wanted to study the impact of butterflies in Ecuador, he wouldn't be able to get any money for that. It would be very difficult to get funding if you wanted to study the impact of butterflies in Ecuador. But, as he said, if you wanted to study the impact of climate change on butterflies in Ecuador, you would have no problems getting money. That's because that is how our scientific research is driven these days. It is driven by fearmongering rather than facts, and that has got to stop.

In regard to that original Great Barrier Reef inquiry, we spent two days in Brisbane, and then it was my first Friday morning inquiry here in Canberra. None other than Professor Ian Chubb turned up. He said in his opening statement that he wasn't going to have accountants telling scientists what to do. Obviously he was referring to me and my colleague Senator Susan McDonald because we're both accountants. He didn't seem to think that we had any authority as senators, and he was having a go at accountants questioning scientists. Let me tell you something: all science is based on recordkeeping. Empirical science is just that: it is about going out and collecting evidence and proving that the theories about what you may think is occurring are repeatable. I was shocked because I had no idea who Professor Ian Chubb was, and I certainly didn't expect him to lay into me in his opening statement, but it just goes to show the extent to which these people try to intimidate senators and people who want to call out this fearmongering. He got the shock of his life when he found out that I wasn't going to be intimidated by any bureaucrat and that he had an obligation, even though he was a former chief scientist, to actually tell the truth.

I'll mention one other research paper that's been debunked over the years. Ten or 15 years ago, there was a study that claimed that a particular species—lionfish—was dying. The sample size of the study was only 45 lionfish. It was subsequently proven that the photos that were taken were duplicates. This scientist had actually gamed her own study. She was a scientist from the Northern Hemisphere who came over here. She got money for research funding and then basically put in a fraudulent claim about lionfish dying on the reef, using duplicate photos to increase the size of the sample to supposedly provide more evidence on what was proven to be a lie.

In conclusion, I reject this. I reject the impact it has on our farmers and, as Senator Canavan rightly points out, the impact it has on our tourism industry as we scare away foreigners who don't want to come here and destroy the reef. I say we go back and we tell the truth about our environment for a change.

Question negatived.