Page 420 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 2019
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There are clear constitutional limits on what we can and cannot do when it comes to electoral laws. And those limits, along with the limits in our Human Rights Act, must be worked through in detail as we consider any changes that affect the rights of Canberrans to vote and participate in elections. This government will continue to ensure that the Assembly is mindful of our legal and our human rights and our evidence context for each issue that we consider. We will continue to work to deliver legislation that helps make Canberra a place where everyone belongs, where everyone is valued and where everyone can participate
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.48): I want to talk mainly about the issue which I am totally surprised nobody has yet mentioned. The evidence base is clear for the principal threat to the people of the ACT, the people of Australia, the people of the world and all the species of the world. You all know what I am going to say because I have said it so many times before: climate change. This should be our number one priority. The evidence base is quite clear. I am not going to bother reiterating things I and other people have said before; I will just make a few points.
One thing that has struck me particularly over the last couple of years is insects, to wit, the lack of them. I continually marvel at the fact that I no longer need a flyscreen. When I grew up, as a child in Canberra you did not really eat outside because the flies were everywhere. People’s backs were covered with flies.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MS LE COUTEUR: Mr Hanson, this is unfortunately not funny. Germany has done some extensive monitoring of insect quantities and they are down to about only 30 per cent of what they were just after World War II. This is a real problem for the world. And a real problem for the ACT was the heat wave we recently had. It is unprecedented to have four days in a row over 40 degrees. I hesitate to say that this is the new normal because the problem is that it is not the new normal. The new normal would suggest we are at a stable point, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest we are at a stable point.
The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing. I spent a bit of time googling what temperatures we can expect by the end of the century. The world’s temperature has probably risen in the order of one degree Centigrade. Googling tells me from numerous resources that there is an over 90 per cent chance that global warming will be more than four degrees by the end of the century. A really depressing thing is that even if every country fulfils their Paris agreements, by the end of the century we will still have a temperature rise of over 3.2 degrees Centigrade. You have to remember that the United States has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention whatsoever of fulfilling its Paris agreements. I am not totally sure what our federal government’s intentions are, but I will leave that for a bit.
One of the more depressing things about this is that, clearly, there is political pressure in terms of how we report the evidence. Two or three weeks ago the local ABC did a four-minute special on the heatwave in Canberra. People may not have noticed that it talked about increasing temperatures but it never once mentioned the words “climate
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