GRIEVANCE DEBATE
Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (13:17): I have the privilege of representing Leichhardt. Over the past few weeks, I've been taking the opportunity of not being here in this place to travel around, get to community and speak so many of the diverse communities across the region—Wujal Wujal, Hope Vale, Cooktown, Mapoon and the Torres Strait. One thing that people came back to me on time and time again was climate change—what the climate is doing and how it is impacting their day-to-day lives.
Climate change, let's be real, is a massive threat to Australia but particularly the far north. The recently released National Climate Risk Assessment provides a very bleak future unless real action is taken. Australia is experiencing more frequent, severe and extreme weather events, as witnessed in Cyclone Jasper just a couple of years ago.
This is not fearmongering; this is fact. Natural disasters are getting worse, the heatwaves are getting worse, and the cold snaps are unpredictable. All this leads to a place where Australians, their homes and their lifestyles are all at risk.
We don't have to imagine these things; they have arrived on our doorstep. I want to talk about some of the real-world aspects of this. I was recently in Saibai, speaking to the people of Masig Island, where inundation occurs in high tides, washing away at the cemeteries, closing the schools, cutting one island off from the other, cutting islands in half and cutting communities away from their health care because the seawalls are starting to fail and are no longer adequate.
That is a real-world real problem right now. Some of the people on Saibai are putting together an evacuation plan. They feel that 30 years is as much time as they have left on their island—on their home—before that culture disappears under the waves.
We owe the people of the Torres Strait more than that. We owe them their culture, which they share with us, and we owe it to them to do all we can to prevent the loss of their homes. In Wujal Wujal, Aunty Lila told me that bush medicine is becoming harder and harder to come by as climate change is impacting when certain fruits and flowers are available to the community.
Do not underestimate the power of bush medicine in culture and community. Western medicine has its place, but what has been done for 40,000 years still resonates within community. It matters.
It matters that you can go to the local aunties and uncles and they can give you the bush medicines that your grandparents had and that their grandparents had and on and on. Slowly that is being whittled away, one season at a time. Wujal Wujal is, of course, also recovering from Cyclone Jasper.
The rain event after it flooded the entire town. An entire town had to be evacuated to Cooktown, Cairns and Mossman. Cooktown and Mossman are not big places.
This put additional stress on services, making it harder for everybody. Cooktown nearly ran out of water. Mossman and Port Douglas were within hours of running out of fresh drinking water as well.
These are real-world examples. In Cairns itself, a thriving city—the 15th-largest city in Australia, I believe—people recovering from the flooding disaster still aren't in their homes. You can put it in numbers.
More than $229 million has already been spent on recovery measures, $130 million on betterment packages to rebuild infrastructure. There's $61.2 million for water and sewerage infrastructure and $13.9 million specifically for Wujal Wujal. Our roads to Kuranda are still cut off.
Our road to Port Douglas is still a single lane. But not everyone lives in Leichhardt. So how would this affect you on a day-to-day basis?
It's going to be the little things that change. It's going to be the little things that make a difference. The stinger seasons in the far north are getting longer.
That means there's more and more time with stinger nets in the water. But they're also travelling south to communities that are unprepared for box jellyfish and irukandji. If they get as far south as beyond Seventeen Seventy, where you hit the surf beaches, that's going to be a very real problem.
You can't net surf beaches. You won't be able to protect people from the irukandji or the boxies, and you will have to close those beaches for six months of the year. You can now catch coral trout in Sydney Harbour.
This is not a good thing. Coral trout belong where there is coral. As they drift further south, so too will other things.
The more intense heat for crocodiles creates too many dudes. Not enough female crocodiles will place pressure on the apex predator. Remove an apex predator and your ecosystem collapses.
It is the opposite problem for turtles; with the heat, there are too many females, which will destroy a critically endangered species. People travel from all over the world to dive on the Great Barrier Reef and to see our beautiful turtles up close. We need to take action to ensure the survival of these species.
That's why I'm proud to be a part of a government that is acting on climate change and pushing towards net zero. Australians voted for climate change. They voted for action, and 62 to 70 per cent is an achievable but ambitious goal to arrest what is already happening.
We know that there's work to be done, both in the renewables sector and in changing our systems, but it's something that we're all going to tackle together, as a country and as a nation. We're building resilience into the Great Barrier Reef with coral IVF and with the replanting of coral. We can now bring those reefs back faster after mass bleaching events.
This is great not only for the world, as we do have custody of the world's largest living ecosystem; it's also important for our children. It shows science. We build resilience because we know that climate change is happening now.
We've already provided enough renewable energy to power more than 10 million homes. We've got massive investment in emissions reduction projects. Renewables are springing up all over the place.
We know that coal-fired power stations are reaching the end of their lives. We have a plan to replace them, and the Australian people have got behind it. Over 76,000 homes now have batteries.
That's more homes than there are in Cairns completely. You've taken Cairns off the grid. Australians have done that together.
They've identified the threat, and they're acting on it. It's something that I'm very proud to be part of, and it's something that I know Australians are taking seriously. The other side, of course, is denying climate change and the rejection of net zero.
The Great Barrier Reef provides 64,000 jobs. It creates opportunities for the regions, with space, wind, sun and water. We have all of these things in abundance.
It turns out that sheep are like solar panels. The grass grows better under them as the water condensation runs off, creating better feed and creating shade for them. It does not have to be an us and them proposition.
Agriculture and renewables can go hand in hand to create a really bright future for the regions as well as protecting our planet. We have a real opportunity to lead not just in our region in Australia and the South Pacific but in the world as a renewable superpower, arresting climate change and putting ourselves at the front of the pack. My children speak to me most about the environment when they speak to me about the work I do in this place.
I think many children are like that. They want a future that mirrors what we have had, and what my parents had. Delivering on climate change and with the delivery of net zero, the Anthony Albanese Labor government does just that.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Lawrence ): There being no further grievances, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Sitting suspended from 13:26 to 16:00