Species Loss

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (14:49): Supplementary question: of the specific bird species that I mentioned, what specific measures does the government have? Does it have a particular strategy, or does it only have strategies which apply to cute mammals with big brown eyes?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:49): Clearly the honourable member opposite and the rest of the cheer squad behind her were not listening to the answers. If you are going to protect species you must actually protect their habitat, where they are to be found, and you have to connect up those areas of habitat instead of having little parklands, small, tiny areas that will not support a species for very long.

As I said, the one thing that members opposite will not contribute to in this debate is talk about the threatened status of species because of changes we are going to face through climate change. Their government, at a federal level, will not do any work on climate change. In fact, it wants to do just the reverse, and stop anyone from acting on it. It is about time that this Liberal opposition stood up to the Neanderthals in the federal parliament who are running this country at the moment, and tell them that they need to act in concert with the rest of the world and get real about climate change, get real about emissions reductions, and take a sensible and real package to Paris at the end of this year.

Don't faff around in this place talking about cuddly species. Let's talk about the real challenges to species loss; let's talk about the real challenges that are confronting us—and that is climate change.