TURNBULL NEEDS TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE TO PROTECT REEF

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says that the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef is climate change. The Reef has already experienced two unpreceded bleaching events in consecutive years.

Yet under Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, the most recent carbon pollution data confirms pollution is rising and will continue to rise under this Government’s policies all the way to 2030.

Additional resourcing to address run-off onto the Reef, outbreaks of the Crown of Thorns Starfish and to make the Reef more resilient are good as far as they go, but Malcolm Turnbull needs to get serious about climate change policy in order to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Without proper action on climate change, it’s clear this Government has given up on the Reef.

The Government also needs to do more to address large-scale land clearing which impacts the Reef by increasing run-off and carbon pollution in the atmosphere.  There was a massive increase in land clearing in Queensland after the Newman Government dismantled land clearing protections.  Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg need to tell their conservative colleagues in Queensland to support the Palaszczuk Government’s legislation to end large-scale land clearing in Queensland.

As well as a comprehensive climate change policy, Labor took a $500 million Great Barrier Reef plan to the last election, which included additional resourcing for the fight against the Crown of Thorns starfish, as well as measures to tackle all other threats to the Reef, like agricultural run-off.  In addition, our plan included more support for Reef research and a reform to improve Reef management architecture to fix the fragmented and uncoordinated approach that has for too long characterised Reef management and conservation.