Greens rank lives and property second to climate change

The quiet seaside town of Tathra is coming to grips with massive loss of property from a devastating bushfire that swept through the area. Picture: Gary Ramage

Richard Di Natale and the Greens have no shame.

With his leadership under pressure after the Greens’ capitulation in Batman, Di Natale stood up in the Senate today to politicise the devastating fires in NSW and Victoria and blame them on “climate change”.

Instead of offering unqualified support for farmers and property owners who have lost everything, Di Natale, with his own leadership in mind, delivered a tactless speech discussing his party’s opposition to coal and support for renewable energy.

In a cheap move to deflect attention away from his wounded position and the party’s failure in Batman, Di Natale blamed the federal government for the weekend’s natural disasters (including the NT cyclone), shamefully saying “Australians are bearing the brunt of their failure”.

He failed to discuss the Greens policy on hazard reduction programs, which puts people’s livelihoods and homes at risk.

For years, the Greens and environmental groups have attempted to obstruct hazard reduction programs.

In South Australia, the Greens policy states that mandatory burn quotas should be replaced with “evidence-based, fluctuating hazard reduction burns”.

“Hazard reduction needs to balance competing social, economic and environmental factors, and be based on best available science,” the policy says.

In NSW, the Greens say they are committed to “an effective and scientifically based approach to hazard reduction, which takes into account the needs of both the human and natural environments”.

In 2013, NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge previously said: “The Greens do have a view that hazard-reduction needs to be responsible and must not only consider lives and property but also take into account the environmental constraints and needs of our native forests.”

“It is important also to recognise that regular hazard-reduction burns do not inevitably lead to lesser fire risk.”

It’s clear from the party’s language, as much as they attempt to spin it, that human lives and Australians’ property rank second to climate change.