STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (13:54): The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK has issued the starkest of warnings about the future if we don't urgently rein in greenhouse gas emissions. It is frightening reading—absolutely terrifying. We are facing up to four billion people dead this century—four billion people dead.

We are facing death, disease, starvation, famine, fire, flood, pestilence, war, displacement and ecosystem collapse, a future where our actual civilisation crumbles and collapses around it. And we're going to get a tiny taste of that in the next six months, because there is a record El Nino forming—again, a frightening, terrifying climate driven event which could lead to some of the most extreme weather events humanity has faced for decades—coming this summer here in Australia.

And what is the Labor Party doing? Approving new coal and gas mines as fast as they can, supporting the logging, destruction and burning of Australia's native forest estate. The psychopaths running fossil fuel companies in Australia are being enabled by the Australian Labor Party.

One of the fundamental jobs of a government is to keep its people safe, not expose them to avoidable danger. The future we are facing is horrifying, it is radical and it is far, far worse than most people alive can comprehend. But it is government's job to keep people safe, and you are failing us, you utter fools.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Blyth ): Thank you. Senator Cadell, you have the call.