Government’s climate stance ‘like NRA’s on guns after a massacre’

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has likened the Coalition stance on climate change to that of the NRA after a gun massacre.

Climate change treated ‘like a joke’ ... Greens leader Richard Di Natale, centre, with Adam Bandt and Sarah Hanson-Young. Picture: Kym Smith.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has controversially likened the government’s refusal to recognise climate change as a cause of the southern NSW bushfires to the National Rifle Association’s failure to acknowledge the role of gun laws in preventing mass shootings in the US.

Communities in the NSW south coast town of Tathra are recovering after a blaze destroyed 69 homes on Sunday, while in southwest Victoria 18 homes, hundreds of livestock and tens of thousands of hectares of farmland were razed.

Senator Di Natale — who is resisting calls to step down after the Greens failed in their bid to win the Batman by-election in Melbourne — accused Malcolm Turnbull of treating the connection between natural disasters and climate change as a “great big joke”.

During Senate question time, Senator Di Natale said fire victims had pleaded with him to “bring up the link between climate change and bushfires”, saying they believed that “treating the symptoms and not the cause is putting them at risk”.

He asked the government why its position was “any different to the NRA in America, who, whenever there is a shooting of innocent people, they claim that is not the time to talk about gun control?”

Government Senate leader ­Mathias Cormann responded by saying the Coalition was taking ­action to combat climate change, consistent with Australia’s international commitments.

“I think it reflects very poorly on the Greens in general and Senator Di Natale in particular that he is making this link in this way on this occasion,” Senator Cormann said.

Mike Kelly, the Labor MP for the southern NSW electorate of Eden-Monaro, home to Tathra, told Sky News the community was willing to have a discussion about climate change but now was not the right time.

“They were the birthplace in our region of the Clean Energy for Eternity movement, but that’s for later,” Dr Kelly said. “This is about people first and foremost and we’ll have this discussion about broader issues later on.”

Asked what the government could do about a global problem when Australia accounted for just 1.3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Senator Di Natale said the risk of extreme weather events could be mitigated if the nation transitioned “away from coal”.

“We have to stop the Adani mine from being built. We have to recognise that coal doesn’t have a long-term future. We need to ensure that we take advantage of the huge jobs that come with building more solar farms, more wind farms,” he said. “But what we’ve got instead of action is a Prime Minister and a Treasurer that brings a lump of coal to parliament and thinks this is all a great big joke.”