STATEMENTS

Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (10:55): I rise again today, like so many others in this place, with a very heavy heart. I express my grief and my sadness at the news of the devastating mass floods that we have witnessed in Nepal and in Tibet. My heart aches for the more than 1,300 people whose lives have been lost, for their families and their communities, for the 5,000 people, their communities and their families, who are waiting for news, who are hoping, and we share their hope.

We know this is a crisis which has destroyed the homes of 50,000 people in Tibet and in Nepal. It will be a long road back to recovery for these communities. I want to acknowledge the pain of the Nepalese and Tibetan communities here in Australia.

We share every year ceremonies with these communities, and we share here in the parliament concerns by the Tibetan community about their loved ones back in Tibet, their ability to communicate with them and be confident that their human rights are protected. I say to those people: 'You're not alone.' In South Australia, at vigils, South Australians have been contributing to the kinds of funds and support that we know will be essential to rebuild those communities.

We're especially concerned about our friends in Tibet, where the flow of information has been tightly controlled by China. As the Greens co-chair of the parliamentary friends of Tibet group, I'm lucky to have met so many wonderful members of the Tibetan community here in Canberra, in Adelaide, in other places around the country, who have made Australia their home and made Australia the better for being here and joining us.

Tibetans have a right to know what is going on for their loved ones and their communities at home. They have a right to know that they're receiving the aid and support that they need in this devastating flood. The people of Nepal and Tibet are the blameless victims of the rapidly changing climate.

Scientists have been warning us for decades that events like these lie ahead. They've been telling us that the climate would contribute to floods, to fire and to other devastating events we are now witnessing. They have told us that the poorest people in the world, those who are not the source of the fossil fuel and pollution that is in our climate and causing the kinds of devastation we are witnessing, pay the highest price for the climate change which is causing such devastation, a high price for their families and communities.

Nepal's prime minister, Balen Shah, said that the flood in the Bhote Koshi River was not an 'ordinary flood'. He recognised the contribution of the climate crisis, while our own prime minister wants us to turn away from calling it, naming it and recognising it. Nepal's prime minister, Balen Shah, said: This is the biggest disaster in the Himalayan region caused by an avalanche of snow and rocks.

This incident indicates that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing with climate change. It is time for us to strongly raise the issue of the disasters we are facing due to climate change before the international community. The leaders of these nations are asking us to recognise what is happening and the consequences for those communities, and yet we fail to act.

Labor continues to open new fossil fuel entities. It continues to add to the climate crisis. I came to this Senate, like so many others, to fight—to fight for action on climate change and to fight for future generations.

Today, my four-year-old grandchild and their parent, Indi, are here in the parliament, and I want to be able to look to them and their generation and say, 'I did everything I could and I worked in this chamber to do everything I could to stop the kind of terrible event we have witnessed in Tibet and in Nepal.' I think of all the grandparents who have lost their grandchildren in this crisis, and I think of all the children who've lost their parents and their grandparents in this crisis.

The community will bear the scars of this for a long time, for many decades ahead. This is a crisis that we must learn the lesson of: we need to make sure we stop contributing to making the climate crisis worse. In our sympathy and condolence, we need to take the action we must to end the crisis that fossil fuels—and our own Australian fossil fuels—continue to contribute to in larger and larger numbers.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Sullivan ): That concludes the debate.