Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (09:57): I would like to start by thanking all members for your very kind messages of support over the past week. I am very grateful. I feel as though my health is improving, and I fully intend to spend the rest of the year causing trouble where necessary.

On that note, late last year I read Tim Winton’s novel Juice, which is set many generations into the future, well after the social order we know is destroyed by global heating and climate catastrophes. Winton’s main character is part of a secret army hunting down and killing the descendants of those who ran the gas, oil and coal companies of the present. It is part of the growing fiction genre known as cli-fi, and while none of us can predict the future, my guess is that our descendants will not live as comfortably as we do as they battle an increasingly hostile climate. That future of course is not too far away, considering this year’s widespread and damaging fires and the most extraordinary floods south of Lorne. About a dozen cars were washed into the sea at Cumberland River alone, and others were seen floating down Wye River. Insurance will become increasingly expensive and harder to get, and that is why the Greens are calling for polluters to pay for the damage done by the climate disasters they cause. Fossil fuel companies should pay up. I do recommend Tim Winton’s book, but I must emphasise the Greens want them to pay with money, not blood. But of course I cannot speak for our descendants.