Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to climate change policy.

The President of Kiribati, President Tong, has said that he needs to ensure that there is somewhere for his people to go. They have just purchased, for $8.7 million, 20 square kilometres of land in Fiji to which they will be able to move 100,000 people when the time comes.

Already in the Pacific Islands and the Indian Ocean we are seeing that the sea level is rising faster than the global average. It is rising by 1.2 centimetres a year. When you take into account storm surge, you are already seeing massive damage not only in Kiribati but also Tuvalu, the Maldives and the Marshall Islands. President Tong has said:

Whatever is agreed within the United States today and with China, it will not have a bearing on our future, because already, it's too late for us … And so we are the canary.

The Seychelles Ambassador to the United Nations has said about a mechanism for loss and damage:

When a population is forced to leave its country, it is no longer a matter of adaptation. Where will these countries find funds?

So for Senator Abetz, on behalf of the Prime Minister, to suggest that linking Australia's pathetic five per cent target to what is going on in Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives suggests complete ignorance. It is confected ignorance.

The reality is that, in global climate negotiations, the small island states are already negotiating a new mechanism—a loss and damage mechanism. That will be a priority for the global treaty being negotiated to be signed in Paris in December 2015. So already we are talking about whether the developed countries of the world are going to put up the funds to enable a loss and damage mechanism to be established so that we pay to assist those countries that are beyond adaptation and people are actually being driven out of their country. They are talking about migration with dignity. They do not want to be referred to as environmental refugees; they want to have migration with dignity—and so they should have migration with dignity.

It shines a light on the appalling state of politics in Australia. How are we going to cope with people who are forced to leave because of storm surge, saltwater incursion and the inability to feed themselves? Where are they going to go? Look at the fuss that is being caused now and the absolute bigotry that we are seeing when it comes to people seeking asylum here now. Well, let me tell you, Mr Deputy President: it will be nothing when compared with the displacement of millions around the world because of global warming. Look at Bangladesh and the people already living on the levy banks there who, every night when the tide comes in, do not know whether they are going to survive the experience. That is what this century is going to be about—and for Senator Abetz to try to pretend that the pathetic five per cent target has nothing to do with it is completely wrong.

When I asked Senator Abetz whether, even with the feeble five per cent target, the Direct Action Plan being introduced with the Carbon Farming Initiative Amendment Bill was going to achieve five per cent, he did not even know that that was the mechanism they were going to use. The department told me in the hearings last week that they cannot say how much of the five per cent is going to be achieved. They cannot say because they do not know—because it is such a poorly designed mechanism.

We have a situation where Australia is continuing to humiliate us in global negotiations. At CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Australia refused to sign on to a fund to finance climate change initiatives. There was our Prime Minister—knowing full well our Pacific island neighbours are already suffering in this way—refusing to sign on. Now, in this budget, he wants to forgo $20 billion from the big polluters and say to them, 'You keep your $20 billion and we will go out and tell the Pacific islanders and everyone at CHOGM, and everyone in the United Nations framework convention process, that we will not support a loss-and-damage clause.' In fact, at recent negotiations, Australia blocked progress on that clause. This is a shame to our nation and it is time this government started to take our global responsibilities on climate change seriously. We have an ethical and moral problem and we have to face up to it and move to do our fair share.

Question agreed to.