Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, just briefly, with all respect to the honourable leader, a fair bit of that was rubbish. It was just pap. Rubbish. When the state’s climate change risk assessment report came out, it identified urgent actions to strengthen infrastructure, the community, ruggedising health, emergency services and transport infrastructure, protecting land marine ecosystems, ensuring physical safety and wellbeing of communities, and improving food security through local food networks. The government’s response to that climate risk assessment report made no commitments ‑ that is, zero ‑ commitments to any of the recommendations or actions required. Not one.
Just so everyone’s really clear about that, to say that the work that will be done or is being done on climate is ambitious and grounded is a gross overstatement. There’s nothing ambitious about legislating a net‑zero target and then doing nothing to reduce emissions across the rest of your economy, and also denying the fact that the reason we have net‑zero now is because of the forests that were saved.
When government talks about protecting what we have today, it is just naive. I mean, you cannot carry on business as usual and think you are going to protect what we have today. The greatest disruptor to our social and economic wellbeing in the future will be climate, and it has already happened; fires, flood and storm surge.
The last thing I will say, and I meant to say it in my substantive contribution, but I point members to page 51 of the National Climate Risk Assessment. In there is a hazard proneness chart and at 2°Celsius of warming, the only places that are more hazard prone than Tasmania are northern Queensland and northern Western Australia. At 3°Celsius of warming, again, we are the most hazard‑prone state in the Commonwealth. We can tell ourselves, because we are a little cool island down in the Southern Ocean, that we will be buffeted from some of the worst impact – and I thought that until I read this assessment. I thought that. It is not true.
With 1.5°Celsius of warming, we are the most hazard‑prone state. I encourage the honourable leader to ask for less greenwashing in the material that is prepared for you. This is the same rubbish we have been hearing for 10 years. I heard it come out of Matthew Groom’s mouth when he was minister, minister Jaensch’s mouth, and I am hearing it again from the leader for government in here, pretending that this is a challenge that is being taken seriously when all the evidence before our eyes is that it is not being taken seriously enough. To say, as we got in that response, ‘Oh, well, people have more access to data so they will know how to be prepared,’ is grossly irresponsible.
People cannot make themselves safe on their own or in a vacuum of knowledge and support. That’s why we invented governments. Governments are here to look after communities. You cannot say, ‘Umm, adapting to climate change is a matter of personal responsibility as we have with COVID,’ you just cannot say that because the other thing that the Climate Risk Assessment Report makes really clear is that it will be older people, people living with a disability, people for whom English is a second language, people who live on the urban fringe, people who are poor, it will be the most disadvantaged cohorts in our community who cannot be told to go and look at a government website to find the data that tells them how to be better prepared for climate risks.
That is a collective responsibility on all of us because in every one of our electorates are highly vulnerable to what’s coming. Highly vulnerable and I include children in that as well. I’m glad to hear that the government is talking about strengthening the act, because they haven’t done any of that for the last 11 years. They’ve weakened it.
I look forward to the summary of the submissions. I know how many strong submissions went in from community groups, stakeholder organisations and scientists. I know broadly what they said, they said the act is weak, it is not fulfilling its purpose, it needs substantial amendment and overhaul so that it delivers on emissions reduction and genuine adaptation planning. That is what this council should be expecting to see when the amendments come forward.
Mr PRESIDENT (Mr Farrell) – The question is that the motion be agreed to.
