Ed,
This is absolutely the right time to talk about climate change. It is with us now and it cannot be denied.
The words unprecedented, catastrophic, one in 100 years, one in 1,000 years etc to describe the latest climate disaster do not in any way make most Page constituents feel any better. I would call this rainfall of biblical proportions and the word unprecedented should be replaced with inevitable.
Remember trauma runs deep and we still have memories of the 2019-20 terrible bush fires and there are still many homeless people as a result of those fires.
Our federal member for Page Kevin Hogan stood next to the Prime Minister at the press conference in Lismore last week. He may be genuinely heartbroken by the destruction all around us, but he still stands beside the prime minister and repeats the mantra “Australia is doing more than any other country re climate change”. Not true.
At the Global Climate Summit in Glasgow Australia slipped four spots to 58th overall place in the Climate Change Performance Index. We ranked last among 64 countries in terms of climate policy.
At the same time, Shane Stone, the Coordinator of the National Recovery & Resilience Agency appointed by the prime minister was quoted as saying flood victims who “want to live among the gum trees cannot rely on taxpayers and ratepayers to continue to pick up the bill for these huge catastrophic events”. Not a cent from the government’s $4-billion disaster recovery and mitigation fund has been handed out in two years, despite earning $700 million in interest. If now is not the time to access this money when is?
Time to turn the Page and vote the climate change deniers out. They may finally admit ‘the climate is changing” but saying we will reach net zero emissions by 2050 does not in any way make the thousands of residents in Page, who are now homeless, feel in any way protected against future, inevitable climate events.
Annie Dorrian, Iluka