Page 3288 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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Ms Le Couteur’s motion calls on the government to report back to the Assembly next year on how well this new regime has been embraced. I do not believe we need further food guilt trips, and I for one have no interest in hearing about a report on how many vegetarian options have been included in our prisons, hospitals, schools and other food outlets other than for specific individuals who have requested them.
I would hope and expect there to be choice, but my top priority is not who chooses what. However, as Ms Le Couteur knows, I am a fan of growing and sharing veggies from my own home, and I encourage that, particularly amongst those with children, because knowing and understanding how to feed yourselves from your own land is an excellent skill. But I seriously think that this motion is at best an attempt to promote a vegetarian lifestyle; at worst, virtue signalling, something at which the Greens are the ultimate professionals. The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting the motion.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (4.06): This has been a somewhat disappointing discussion in that I think Ms Le Couteur’s remarks and her motion have been sadly misinterpreted. It is quite clear. As Ms Le Couteur mentioned in her speech, the recent IPCC—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—report commissioned by the United Nations has warned that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of global warming will fall significantly short without drastic changes in global land use, agriculture and human diets.
The special report on climate change and land describes plant-based diets as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change and includes a policy recommendation to reduce meat consumption. The report highlights the fact that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.
One of the measures the report discusses is the need for a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets. The report discusses how certain dietary choices—and that word “choices” has been used a lot today, so let us think about that—essentially meat from intensive farming requires more land and water and causes more greenhouse gas emissions. It says:
The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds … presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
This is the unfortunate reality. I know we like to choose whatever we like—and many people choose to eat meat—but the factual reality is that this is very damaging to the land and to the planet, is worsening climate change and will hurt us all. This is something we need to very seriously consider. This does not mean we all need to become vegetarian or vegan, and Ms Le Couteur was very clear in her remarks about that, despite the, at best, misunderstanding and, at worst, wilful misrepresentation, of her position today.
Mrs Jones: The Greens have never done that, have they?
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