On Tuesday, 28 October 2025 I spoke in Parliament about the compounding impact of severe storms across Brisbane, and the major parties' inadequate climate policies.
You can read my full speech below, or in the official Parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard) here.
This Sunday just gone was far from a regular Sunday around Maiwar, all of the western suburbs and much of the south-east corner. The member for Moggill
and, no doubt, the member for Springwood and plenty of others would have seen extraordinary scenes in their electorates.
We had seven-centimetre hailstones bucketing down in St Lucia, and yet I thought to myself, ‘These clowns want to open a new coalmine.’
We had tens of thousands of homes without power, but they want to open a new coalmine.
We had kids missing their year 12 exams because schools could not open without power, but they want to open another coalmine.
We had a 39-degree day the next day—the hottest October day since 1957— and the elderly residents of my electorate were without power and without air conditioning, but these guys want to open a new coalmine and start a new gas project.
It is not just them. They might be holding the reins at the moment—
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Kempton): Member, please address your remarks through the chair and not across the floor.
Mr BERKMAN: Certainly, Mr Deputy Speaker. It might be them who hold the reins at the moment, but let us be clear: neither major party here in Queensland has ever seen a coal or gas project they did not want to approve, irrespective of how clearly we understand the impacts of climate change to be and how real they are in our communities right now.
Labor at the federal level, no less, are refusing to include any kind of climate trigger in their environmental law reviews. The federal environment minister’s first order of business was to approve the north-west gas project until 2070! It is mind-boggling. The science has been so clear for so many years that, yes, there will be more destructive hailstones and more destructive storms along Australia’s east coast. It is crystal clear that heatwaves, like the one we had yesterday, will be more intense. They will continue to be more intense in Queensland.
I am not here to dwell on that, though. To be perfectly honest, I think most Queenslanders understand that our politicians have been bought and sold by the fossil fuel industry for decades. It is important to recognise that we still have Energex out there—they are in the bucketing rain right now still trying to reconnect power—and it is all for the benefit of the fossil fuel CEOs, who are getting richer.
Did anyone else in here try to put their six-year-old to bed last night at nine o’clock in 30-degree heat without power? When I left my house this morning, my neighbours were having a tree pulled off their roof. This is real. It is happening. I am calling on the government to activate disaster recovery support for Brisbane areas hit hardest by Sunday’s hailstorm and the subsequent power outages. There will be more hailstorms, more heatwaves and more bushfires.