Page 3294 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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I thank Ms Berry for her comments about schools. I put in a number of questions on notice on the subject, and I have talked about it in estimates. As I said in my speech, it is entirely unclear what the situation is in schools. I am aware that, as a practical result of the move to healthier eating, kids are having less meat presented to them at school canteens. That can only be a good thing. I was really pleased to hear her say that she would support a vegetarian meal a week. That is further than I went in my motion, because I was trying to be fairly low key and always ensuring that there were a lot of options. But, Ms Berry, yes, go for it. I look forward to it. You said it, Ms Berry, and I am very pleased to support your idea of a vegetarian meal a week.
Overall, I would have to say that I am not very pleased with this debate. As members have heard me say many times, I stood for election for one reason: because it was getting painfully obvious that climate change, left unabated, would affect us. It is already affecting us now. Certainly it is going to affect my grandchildren. I will not talk about what it is going to mean for my grandchildren, because I am going to try not to start crying, but clearly we have to do a lot more than we are. I quote from the summary of the IPCC’s climate change report put out only last week:
Efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and the impacts of global warming will fall significantly short without drastic changes in global land use, agriculture and human diets …
This is one of the things that we are really talking about.
This reminds me of something else that Mrs Jones said. She thought that we did not have enough space in the world for us to all live on vegetarian diets. Actually, the people who have looked at it have found that it would take 75 per cent less farmland if we lived on plant-based diets. That is because most of the grain and soy produced is fed to animals, which are then fed to humans. This is a very inefficient way of producing food.
This Assembly voted for the proposition that we are in a climate emergency. I am not sure if the Liberal Party voted for that, but the Labor Party did. Moving to a less animal based diet is one of the things it is clear we will need to do. As the report said, we need drastic changes in land use, agriculture and human diets.
I am trying to start this happening more in Canberra. If we are going to make this transition in any way that is going to be at all pleasant for human beings, or any of the other species on this planet, we need to start sooner rather than later. I have suggested a series of very small steps that would make this easier, exposing people to what is a really nice diet. Plant-based food is good and nice to eat. It is, in general, better for human health. If you have nothing else to do, have a look at the EAT-Lancet site.
Mr Parton: Give us a recipe.
MS LE COUTEUR: I will send you some recipes, Mr Parton. I have some quotes from the American heart organisation website which I copied this morning. The American heart organisation says:
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