My Commitment
We are facing a more volatile and changing climate, with more immediate and ambitious action required to address the climate risk.
Our response to climate change can’t be limited to adaptation and risk management – we need to prioritise mitigating the effects of climate change, while ensuring we deliver ecological and social climate justice.
The climate change issue is also a human rights issue, and I am committed to ensuring we take a human-rights-based approach to developing and implementing our climate response.
Priorities:
Climate change is the greatest and most pressing public policy challenge facing us globally, nationally, and locally.
- Urgently reconsider and reinstate a dedicated minister for climate change as a standalone portfolio.
- Incorporate climate change benchmarks into reportable dashboards across all applicable sectors.
- Ceasing senseless logging of our native forests to protect our vital carbon banks, our lifeblood waterways, many threatened species from extinction, as well as reduce cataclysmic bushfires we have seen escalate over previous decades.
- A comprehensive independent root-and-branch inquiry into the Environment Protection Authority, to ensure it is effectively delivering on its statutory roles, and also meeting community expectations in protecting and preserving lutruwita/Tasmania’s treasured national environment.
Achievements:
I have made significant progress towards ensuring the government prioritises acting on climate change issues we are facing:
- In 2019, I chaired a sub-committee overseeing a Legislative Council inquiry into fin-fish farming. We produced an Interim Report in 2020, with the Final Report being published in May, 2022. The inquiry made 68 recommendations to the government which can be read here.
- I recently in May 2024 supported the call for an independent root-and-branch inquiry into the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Tasmania.
- I have also questioned the government for the past five years on the long overdue Tasmanian State of the Environment Report, which has now been produced in September 2024.
- I made a speech on the debate on the Climate Change (State Action) Ammendment Bill 2021 in October 2022 which can be viewed here.
