Page 572 - Week 02 - Thursday, 16 February 2017
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The unfortunate predictions are that the impacts will be much more severe for future generations. Last week’s heatwaves are just one example of climate change impacts. Increasingly, we will need to deal with these. Let us talk for a moment about what happens during heatwaves. First of all, people’s health suffers. Extreme heat increases the risk of heat illness, exacerbates pre-existing illnesses, and children and the elderly are most at risk. Heatwaves dramatically affect patient presentations. During the heatwave in south-east Australia in 2009, emergency call-outs jumped by 46 per cent; and 374 excess deaths were reported, attributable to the heat. The current prediction for the ACT is that by 2050 heat-related deaths in the ACT will double.
Extended hot and dry weather, of course, increases our bushfire risk. During the recent heatwave we had total fire bans and a severe fire risk. In New South Wales the fire conditions were described by the Rural Fire Service Commissioner as “the worst possible conditions, they are catastrophic—we haven’t seen this in New South Wales to this extent, ever,” he said. We are always lucky when we escape bushfire threats like these without catastrophe. We were fortunate that lightning strikes that occurred on Saturday evening did not result in fires in the ACT. Our neighbours in New South Wales were not as lucky.
The current prediction is that by 2030 the ACT will face twice the number of fire ban days and extended heatwaves than we do today. Then there are the more day-to-day impacts resulting from heatwaves. Events are cancelled. Last weekend is a testament to this, with sporting events particularly, but a range of other activities across the ACT, being postponed or cancelled. Infrastructure is put under pressure. We have had buses break down due to the extreme heat on previous occasions; roads have started to melt. There is added pressure on government budgets, and there are flow-through difficulties right through the community.
As we saw last week, the heatwaves are putting pressure on the nation’s electricity system. For the first time last week we had to put out a call to Canberrans to try to reduce their electricity use during the peak period to try to avoid the possibility of blackouts triggered by demand beyond that which the electricity grid can supply. This leads me to the first of several energy policy myths I would like to address through this motion.
As an Assembly, let us set the record straight on the very deliberate commentary that some politicians are using in an attempt to undermine our efforts on renewable energy. Renewable energy generation—solar and wind—is absolutely compatible with energy security. It is not to blame for supply issues that arose during the heatwave. In an attempt to advance their political agenda, some federal politicians have spread a fiction that renewable energy is responsible for blackouts or load shedding. That is simply false. In fact, as the front pages of newspapers recently showed, FOI documents revealed that the federal government was informed of this fact, yet it continued to try to blame renewable energy.
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