World Environment Day

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:54): I rise today to talk about World Environment Day. It is my view that every day should be World Environment Day. We have a habit of compartmentalising issues and giving them a particular day and, when it comes to government, putting them into silos. We have departments around the state and nationally dedicated to the environment, yet we see other agencies and other departments operating in a manner counter to what needs to be done.

This World Environment Day comes after a series of deeply concerning reports: the IPCC report and reports on species extinction and various other environmental crises that we are facing. When it comes to species extinction, the record here in Australia is not great. Currently, we have 1,800 plant, animal and ecological communities under direct threat and facing the real potential of extinction because of the lack of political will to effectively address this issue.

On a global level, we are entering into the age of a great extinction—the sixth great extinction. We have lost 90 per cent of top order species in the marine environment. Half the marine population has been essentially wiped out over the last 40 years. As a species, humanity represents 0.01 per cent of all life on this planet, but we are responsible for the loss of 83 per cent of the wild mammals that used to roam this planet. We are fundamentally altering the nature of life on this planet, so it is good to hear initiatives in relation to Adelaide beaches. I noticed that nearly all the money has been spent in Adelaide and not much out in the regions when it comes to our beaches.

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Environment and Water is called to order.

Mr HUGHES: But let's say this: when it comes to our beaches, if other governments around the world were to replicate what our government is doing nationally to address emissions, the work that we are doing here in South Australia to protect our beaches is going to be short lived. The projections now for sea-level rises—and scientists are collectively indicating that they have underestimated the likely sea-level rises—are going to have a major impact on the work that is being done and is going to be done.

Today, the Minister for Energy and Mining talked about solar projects that are on the way in South Australia. There is this rebadging going on, this sleight of hand, to state that these solar projects are somehow initiatives that started under the current government. These projects have long lead times and there is a whole raft of these projects. In fact, the overwhelming majority of them started during the term of the last government because we did have a welcome mat when it came to renewables.

Reference was made to wind and to the investment in wind resources in this country. It is the nature of technological evolution that it is not all happening at an even pace. The reason that wind made such an earlier penetration is that the costs of wind had come down significantly. Hot on the heels of that, the cost of solar photovoltaic especially has come down. It has come down massively over recent years, to the point where nearly all the agencies—national agencies, global agencies, even organisations like Greenpeace—seriously underestimated the cost falls in renewables.

We are seeing a whole range of solar projects starting to get off the ground in South Australia. Reference was made to the Bungala project, a project started under the previous Labor government. Reference has been made to the contract that has just been entered into with Shanghai Electric. Sanjeev Gupta arrived in South Australia, when there was a state Labor government, with confidence in investing in this state and in renewables as part of the energy and industrial pathway he was mapping out.