MEDIA RELEASE: ACTION ON CLIMATE ESSENTIAL FOR THE REEF

ACTION ON CLIMATE ESSENTIAL FOR THE REEF

SUNDAY, 29 APRIL 2018

Mr Turnbull can’t buy his way out of the severe risk to the Great Barrier Reef that climate change and other challenges pose. The Great Barrier Reef is being attacked from every side through climate change, land clearing and turning the Coral Sea into a massive trawling zone. 
 
The Liberal and National Parties are working against the health of the reef on each of these issues.
 
You can’t be serious about saving the Reef without a serious plan to tackle climate change. The greatest threat to the reef is climate change. 
 
Unable or unwilling to stand up to his extreme right, Malcolm Turnbull is incapable of delivering real climate policy.
 
After coming down by 10 per cent under Labor, Australia’s pollution levels have risen every year under the Liberals, and according to the government’s own projections, they’ll miss their weak 26 per cent by 2030 reduction target by 22 percentage points.
 
The weak emissions reduction target of the government’s National Energy Guarantee will mean there are no renewable energy projects built over the entirety of the 2020s.
 
Resources Minister Matt Canavan has come out this week slamming the proposed Queensland government reintroduction of land clearing laws, even after Campbell Newman’s trashing of Labor’s land clearing laws has seen emissions from the land sector at a minimum tripled in Great Barrier Reef catchment areas. Ocean acidification is caused by the same pollution that causes climate change. 
 
As long as Malcolm Turnbull continues to pander to the climate change deniers of his party room the Great Barrier Reef will continue to suffer.