Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (17:20): I reflected today, prior to this, on my first speech in parliament, nearly five years ago. One of the key reasons I wanted to go into the parliament and become a Greens senator was to protect the ocean, focus on marine conservation and clean up the ocean. I refuse to accept that one of the biggest living organisms on this planet, the Great Barrier Reef, is going to be destroyed on our watch. I appreciate that politics, this chamber and global politics, has suffered from a severe outbreak of mass moronity, but I will not accept—for my children's sake and for future generations—that we are just going to roll over and let the coal industry and those too stuck in their ideology not take action on this problem in the Great Barrier Reef. In the last months I have been chairing a Senate inquiry into warming oceans and the impact that climate change is having on the oceans and our fisheries. Let us state very clearly: it is irrefutable that increasing emissions are driving higher water temperatures and it is irrefutable that higher water temperatures are destroying and impacting our marine ecosystems. My committee, the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee, has heard that Tasmania has only recently lost its 10,000-year-old giant kelp ecosystems that used to stretch from Eddystone lighthouse at Eddystone Point at the top of north-east Tasmania all the way down to southern Tasmania. I was contacted by Mick, from the Eaglehawk Dive Centre, last year and he said to me, 'Senator, if you are going to come diving on these giant kelp forests, you had better come soon' Well, unfortunately, I missed the boat. He appeared as a witness at our inquiry only a couple of months ago and he said, 'They are gone. The giant kelp forests are gone.' Let me tell you about the similarity between giant kelp forests in the south of our country, in the southern oceans, and the Great Barrier Reef. They are not just reefs and seaweed kelp forest; they are cities underwater for marine creatures, for biodiversity. That is where our productivity for our fisheries come from—for rock lobsters, for abalone, for fin-fish. If the reefs die, our fisheries industry goes with them. Let us be really clear about this: it is not just tourism jobs that we are debating here today in this motion. We have been going into scientific evidence about the impact that warming waters are having on our fisheries around the country. The committee still has other states to go to, including to Far North Queensland. A scientist who spoke to the committee at One Tree Island in Queensland has been there for 25 years monitoring ocean temperatures, and the committee was told that we are in unchartered territories, that no-one could have possibly predicted that we would have back-to-back bleaching events. No-one could have predicted that. And it is not just the bleaching events. It looks bad because the corals look like they have died. It takes a long time for these corals to bounce back. They are severely weakened by their condition. So, when we get a dump of nutrients into the water and we get physical degradation from cyclones and other systems, it makes it a lot harder for the coral to recover—and that is exactly the situation we are facing now. I watched Professor Terry Hughes on 60 Minutes last night. I generally have a policy of not responding to the idiocy of Malcom Roberts, but I will say to Malcolm Roberts that it was actually— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Birmingham ): Order! Senator Roberts; thank you, Senator Whish-Wilson. Senator WHISH-WILSON: Sorry; Senator Roberts. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! I would also suggest that your description of Senator Roberts is unparliamentary and I ask you to withdraw. Senator WHISH-WILSON: I would dispute that, Acting Deputy President, if I could, because of the context. I did not say that he was an idiot; I said the idiocy of his— Senator Dastyari: They are not mutually exclusive. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Dastyari! Senator Whish-Wilson, I do not mean to be disruptive. I will refer this to the Clerk, just in the interests of not reflecting poorly on another senator. Please continue and I will get some advice. Senator WHISH-WILSON: Thank you, Acting Deputy President. Senator Roberts seemed to think that this is a Greens conspiracy theory and that we are out to destroy the tourism industry in Queensland. Well, it was 60 Minutes that did the documentary last night—not the Greens. I would not say that 60 Minutes are exactly an ally to the left and to the conservation movement; yet I have to say that it was actually an excellent program. It nearly brought me to tears watching it last night, I was that saddened by what I saw. I have been hearing the evidence all around the country of this happening in other parts of Australia. The coral bleaching that we have seen in previous events has also happened in other great reef systems, such as the Caribbean corals off the coast of Western Australia. This is a crisis, and those who deny that we need to take action to prevent this situation getting worse are, in my view, climate criminals. There is other way around that, from my point of view—they are climate criminals. I have to say that the idea that Senator Canavan can come in here during question time and repeatedly, ad nauseam—with an emphasis on the word 'nausea'—talk about clean coal, which I understand only Clive Palmer is a believer in, as though it is some sort of infomercial for the coal industry, really makes me sick. It makes my stomach turn. I have to be honest that I have found myself in recent weeks getting really angry during question time—as no doubt you have noticed, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi. I will try to refrain from interjecting, but this issue, I think, is going to be the most important issue for our generation. Let me tell you—another comment about Senator Roberts—that you do not need proof to be prudent. The insurance industry was founded on the concept that you do not need proof to be prudent; you need to manage your risks. Climate change, under any analysis, is a severe risk. Senator Gallacher: What do the re-insurers say about climate change? Senator WHISH-WILSON: The re-insurers are exactly the same concept. Liberal senators came into the Senate today and talked about the impact on India if we do not burn coal and develop the Adani mine. 60 Minutes talked about the reef and, during the week, Four Corners ran a movie, a short film, that is being shown around the world that was put together by ex-US military generals and admirals. They are acting on climate change. It is a really good documentary. It is going to film festivals all around the world. I suggest to anyone listening that they watch it. It talks about how climate change is acting as the accelerator for global instability and that it is the biggest threat to global security. They talked about the Arab Spring and they gave examples of how the sea level rise predicted could, in Bangladesh alone, displace 20 per cent of their population as climate change refugees. That is 30 million people from Bangladesh going into places like India—where, by the way, they have built the world's first climate wall to keep out refugees. So do not come in here and give us all this nonsense about burning coal being good for people in poor countries. Climate change is the biggest threat to these countries—with extreme weather events and wars over precious resources—and we owe it to these countries to act. This concept that somehow it is about jobs: well, I have been and dived off the Great Barrier Reef, and I have been to dive off lots of reefs around the world, and I know that, based on what Professor Terry Hughes said on 60 Minutes last night, the latest surveys on the middle section of the reef show that damage to the reef from coral bleaching has gone from moderately damaged to severely damaged. There are 70,000 jobs in the tourism industry on the Great Barrier Reef. I understand why the tourism industry has not wanted to enter this political debate in the past for fear of talking down their industry and loss of visitations to the Great Barrier Reef. I say to them: 'I understand that, but you are going to have to get engaged and get involved if this proposition is going to be viable into the future.' The reef is still going to continue to be a global tourism attraction. We have to actually act to protect the reef and the marine life that lives in the reef. These warming waters are damaging marine life and marine ecosystems all around the country. It is an irrefutable fact that if we do not cut down on our emissions then this is going to continue to get worse. And, as a large bald-headed man who was a singer for Midnight Oil once said, 'Sometimes you have to take the hardest line'. We will take the hardest line on any new coal fired power stations, the clean-coal myth and any new coalmines because someone has to stand up for future generations and our marine creatures to make sure we have a planet that is liveable for the next 50 years. (Time expired) The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bernardi ): Before I invite the Deputy President to resume the chair, Senator Whish-Wilson, during that conversation I asked you to reconsider the use of a term that you used. I am advised by the Clerk that it is not unparliamentary. However, there is a standing order that suggests that we should not be reflecting poorly on other senators simply for voicing their opinions. As the chair, that is how I seek to uphold the standing orders. But you have done nothing incorrect. I merely remind senators that this is a debate of substance rather than reflecting on other individual senators.