Extinction Rebellion protestors blocked off roads to Parliament House yesterday by chaining themselves to trucks to call for action on the “Climate Emergency”. We all know the “climate emergency” is hogwash, but I rarely see climate alarmists held accountable for their false claims.
So I decided I better go down to their protest and have a ‘friendly’ chat. Paul Murray had me on his program last night to discuss.
The Liberal/National government has handed down a budget that the Labor party would be proud of. The Government is increasing borrowing to respond to a phoney climate emergency. Our ports and much of our power grid are in the hands of malicious foreign owners, and yet there is nothing in the budget to buy back these vital strategic assets.
Defence funding is being spent on wasteful white elephant programs like the attack class submarines instead of caring for our diggers and making sure they have the equipment they need. There is no vision or care for the future in this budget. Only One Nation has the vision to fix the country.
As servant to the people of Queensland & Australia I remind the senate and all Australians that 24 years ago Pauline Hanson warned that Australia was heading to a place that we would not recognise as Australia.
The Media devoted much attention to the immigration aspects of her comments, and completely missed the substance.
Today we have arrived at the place Pauline warned us about.
Australians are living with restrictions on association, on speech, on movement, on protest and we even have mandatory face coverings.
Our federation has broken apart, we have seen border checkpoints between States.
The phrase ‘papers please’ which has defined tyrants throughout history, is now life for everyday Australians.
Our police are arresting law-abiding citizens in their own homes for the crime of organising a peaceful protest.
Our police are forcefully arresting a journalist for the crime of reporting that protest.
Dictators have been overthrown for less than this!
In the famous words traced to French, English and American philosophers Montaigne, Bacon and Thoreau, our leaders had “nothing to fear but fear itself”, and they chose fear!
The Premiers and the Prime Minster have surrendered power to ‘unelected bureaucrats with medical degrees’ who have shown themselves incapable of seeing the big picture.
While social media are calling the COVID restrictions on businesses a war on Capitalism, it’s much more sinister.
Corporate Australia have record sales, record profits and have paid themselves higher dividends and bonuses.
The Liberal National Government sent JobKeeper to these same companies who used the money to pay themselves yet more dividends and bonuses.
Now with this budget the Company Tax clawback has been extended to 2023/24. Companies making a loss in 23/24 can claim that loss against tax paid in 2018/18 and the Government will give a refund.
Let me explain the concept of taxation to the Treasurer. The Government is not supposed to take the tax paid by corporate Australia… and give it back to them.
This money was supposed to pay for the things that define Australia as a caring society – Medicare, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, childhood education and social security.
The Treasurer cannot give corporate tax back and then borrow the money to pay for recurring expenditure.
Yet that is exactly what this budget does.
Debt, debt and more debt to pay for profligate spending seemingly with no thought to the next generation that will be left to pay for it.
This is a budget of which Labor would be proud.
When I talk about the Lib Lab duopoly, even their budgets are looking the same.
As a result of coronavirus measures the world’s 400 richest people have increased their wealth by over 1 trillion dollars. We do not need to add to their wealth accumulation.
Much of this wealth is money that was once spent in local communities, in local hardware stores, community supermarkets, gift stores and greengrocers. Now many of those have been forced to close.
Online growth has gone to Amazon whose owner is the world’s richest man.
The real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth, from small business to the elites in Australian history.
We expect this sort of thing from the Liberal Party and their sell-out sidekicks the Nationals.
But Labor has embraced the politics of fear and cronyism in Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria.
Shame on you.
Only One Nation is committed to restoring a fair go for working Australians.
As our motion today on the National Curriculum and last sitting on de-gendered language shows, One Nation will continue to defend Australia as a faith-based nation committed to family and community.
One Nation continues to champion the natural environment. We continue to fight for clean air, for clean water, for clean food and for clean medicines.
We leave worshipping of the sky god of warming to Labor, the Greens and sadly now, in their final act of surrender, the Liberal-National Party with their policies contradicting science, common sense and nature.
With this budget the Government is borrowing money to increase funding for a fake climate emergency. There’s no climate emergency and a gutless pandering to the bed wetters on the left is not in the best interests of Australians.
This budget has a black armband view of Australia’s future. The projections for the contribution to GDP from agriculture are based on the assumption that lower rainfall will return and agricultural output and exports will decline.
According to the Government’s own research a drought like this last one has happened 10 times in the last 1000 years. It was not climate change 1000 years ago and it is not climate change now.
Cold weather has overtaken the northern hemisphere with widespread crop failures, reduced harvests and higher prices. This will not change over forward estimates.
Natural climate cycles have given our farmers a wonderful opportunity to grow our agricultural sector and exports.
Foreign influence and ownership in Australia has reached crisis levels and this budget has not done anything about it.
Our ports in Darwin, Melbourne and Newcastle and much of our power grid are now in the hands of a hostile foreign power. Those owners have publicly professed their loyalty not to Australia but to the Chinese Communist party.
This budget makes no provision for the cost of buying these contracts back so one can assume the Government does not intend to act to restore Australian sovereignty over our strategic assets.
Our armed forces are incapable of waging war against any serious challengers. Our subs are in pieces, only 1 sub is combat ready at this moment.
One.
The budget continues the new subs project despite the cost rising to an estimated $200 billion and delivery pushing out past 2030.
On the bright side Mr President, Australia is advancing our space capability.
Later this year an Australian designed and manufactured satellite will be launched into orbit from an Australian designed and manufactured rocket, using an Australian launch facility.
How amazing is that?
This is proof that it is time to get the government out of people’s lives and let free enterprise and Aussie ingenuity fix this mess.
Starting with withdrawing from the United Nations and their sovereignty-sapping, wealth-sucking, industry-killing conventions that make Australia less not more.
One Nation’s alternative budget will recover the freedoms, opportunities and living standards that Australians once enjoyed.
One Nation will cancel the submarine contract and purchase nuclear powered submarines off the shelf to expedite delivery and recover our defensive capability.
One Nation will terminate the clean energy fund and the Department of Climate change while honouring agreements already in place.
Every year Liberal-Labor-Nationals climate and energy policies cost Australians an ADDITIONAL $B13. The Liberal Energy Minister admits he is afraid for future electricity prices and terrified of losing reliability and stability.
Rightly so thanks to Liberal-Labor-Nationals policies starting with John Howard in 1996.
One Nation will abolish all energy subsidies for fossil fuel (except the diesel fuel rebate) and renewables so that free enterprise can build reliable, baseload power of whichever type they consider the most efficient.
This will restore our productive capacity by breathing life into our devastated industries.
One Nation will allow doctors to prescribe Australian medical cannabis to anyone with a medical need.
One Nation calls for a national taxation summit to reach agreement on how our taxation system is failing everyday Australians and destroying our country and to arrive at solutions based on proven principles.
This budget increases the number of public servants by 5000 over the next 12 months.
One Nation will freeze employment numbers in the Federal public service and re-allocate staff away from virtue signalling and pork barrelling projects into productive pursuits.
One Nation will reduce immigration such that our net population growth becomes zero. This will allow infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools and housing to catch up with the avalanche of migrants that Labor/Greens and Liberal/Nationals have let in over the last 20 years.
A net zero population policy will actually allow around 80,000 migrants to still come in each year to replace the 80,000 who leave each year. We would expect 10,000 of those will be refugees.
This contrasts with a peak arrival rate of 275,000 new migrants annually pre COVID – 3 & ½ times our stable number.
The reduction in demand will take the heat out of the housing market and allow everyday Australians some relief from the extreme inflation we are seeing in housing, education, aged care, child care and medical expenses.
One Nation is preparing a plan that will turn Northern Australia into a growth engine for the whole country, offering a new future for Australia based on agriculture, mining, value adding.
More importantly, based on community.
With water availability, labour prices and government all against the farmer, it is too hard for smaller farms to survive and even the large farms are struggling.
If our farms fallover, regional towns will quickly follow and then the rest of the country will be in big trouble. Governments at every level need to help our regions be building cheap, reliable electricity and secure supplies of water.
Decades of government dropping the ball on these issues has left us in a scary position. I talk about this in my new segment, Our Nation Today, with farmer Trevor Cross and Mike Ryan.
Let me know what you think.
[Malcolm Roberts] Regional Queensland literally feeds and clothes us, Yet so many short-sighted government policy decisions will hit these regions first and hit the regions hardest. Travelling around Queensland, I’m constantly reminded that the one-size-fits-all policies just don’t meet the needs of rural and regional centres. We’re talking about the fundamentals that urban areas take for granted. Affordable, secure, and reliable water, energy, and food. Reasonable insurance premiums and freight rates, roads, and rail fit for purpose. Access to health and education that gives people the confidence to settle in the regions. There’s nothing more fundamental than food.
A prosperous agricultural sector is essential for supplying Australia’s food needs and the needs of the rest of the world. In the financial year 2021, the gross value of agricultural production is estimated at $66 billion, a staggering figure. And it’s easy to forget that being a farmer is a tough gig because even in good years it’s 24/7 and the balancing acts of risks within a farmer’s control, and those beyond never stops. There’s been a lot of talk about an agriculture-led recovery after the COVID restrictions that smashed our economy and the need for confidence to pick up the pieces and to keep going. Many in our farming community have sustained shattering losses with ready to pick food being ploughed back in and a major reduction in the planting of next year’s crop, simply due to worker shortages.
I see a role for government in creating the right environment for businesses to flourish. Part of that is to help mitigate unnecessary risks, such as having strategically placed dams and a well-connected water infrastructure grid which should have happened years ago. So instead of the Queensland government spending $10 million to cart water for Stanthorpe when the town ran out, it would have been better spent on a longer term solution such as more town weirs to hold more water. We know that our water reserves and existing dams are not keeping up with population growth. Government should aim to minimise its unnecessary intrusions and yet any farmer will tell you that excessive regulations such as the reef regulations and vegetation management laws create an impossible business environment for farmers.
Layer upon layer upon layer of stupid and destructive rules and regulation leaves the farmer with ever-decreasing profits. And yet we expect farmers to just saddle up and continue to make it work. Today Mike Ryan talks with Trevor Cross, a successful Queensland horticultural grower based in Bundaberg. I first met Trevor in 2017 at his farm and was impressed with his passion for farming, his business savvy and the hard work that he and his team do everyday to put many veggies such as tomatoes, capsicums and zucchinis into our supermarkets.
[Mike Ryan] Trevor, thanks for joining us.
[Trevor Cross] Thanks Mike, good to meet you.
[Mike Ryan] Now, tell us about your farming business, the size of your holdings, where you’re located, what you grow and what you export.
[Trevor Cross] We’re in Bundaberg in Queensland, we farm about two and a half thousand acres of small crops. So we grow tomatoes, gourmet roma’s and cherry tomato. And then zucchinis, capsicums, chilies, melon, pumpkin, a few cucumber, snow peas, and sugar snaps, and just a few beans, so we spread that over about a nine-month period in the Bundaberg region. So most of our stuff actually goes Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne a little bit to Adelaide. And this year in New Zealand, it’ll open its exports again, it’s been out for 12 months with this virus. So it’s supposed to open up again this year, so hopefully that’ll be good for the industry.
[Mike Ryan] I can really empathise with what you do. I mean, my dad will probably kill me for this being from the land. I recall he actually decided to go into rockies and do rock melons and large acreage. Anyway, the bottom fell out of the market. And I recall he got a cheque from the bank for, I think it would have been something like sixpence in those days. And I’m thinking, why would you ever want to do this? And then he decided to go into avocados and citrus and stuff. And that’s just as terrifying. It’s a really hard business, isn’t it?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah. The biggest problem with farming it’s actually almost like an addiction. You go out and start growing something, it’s very, very hard to stop it. It’s not so much about money, I don’t think, when you’re a farmer. It’s about just seeing a crop planted, seeing the crop grow and getting it picked. But the biggest problem is there needs to be some rewards on the way through.
[Mike Ryan] What’s the greatest challenge, say, to business such as yours on the land?
[Trevor Cross] In our industry it’s, because it’s a high-labor industry, it’s probably, at the moment, getting enough people to actually harvest crops. Because when we’re in peak-season we have about 350 people here, so… And there is going to be a shortage. I’m not quite sure how far we’ll be down, whether it’s going to be 10- or 20-percent down. So that’s probably one of the hardest parts. Water supply’s another major component to our operation, and just general costing. The costs keep going up and up and up and the end prices doesn’t really reflect what it’s costing to do business, anymore.
[Mike Ryan] So you have two and a half thousand acres, which is a very large, large piece of land. Do you think the days of the smaller farmer, for example, 20 or 30 acres are gone, and that you need to have, just to accommodate your cost and make sure you get a decent return, that you’ve got to have a large business instead of those, not micro, but the smaller businesses used to be.
[Trevor Cross] It’s volume now, whereas before it was just a family, a family could actually survive on a hundred acres and live fairly comfortable, now a hundred acres unless you’re doing really niche market product, you would never, ever survive. So everything’s been turned into bigger farms. We’d be one of the largest, freehold personal farms in town now, there’s probably a couple other families about our size that are just doing it, and the rest is a lot of consolidated money from investment companies, and they’re now are doing nut trees, mainly.
[Mike Ryan] What’s greatest impact on your business when it comes to costs? Which ones are the ones that stand out? Is it labour?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah, Labour used to run about 33- to 35-percent we’d work on for labour, and the way it’s going, last year I think hit early forties, about 42-, 44-percent, and this year, unless there’s a big market change I think it’ll go 50%.
[Mike Ryan] Wow. That’s incredible, isn’t it? How do you survive?
[Trevor Cross] Well, I just hope that there’s actually money paid at the other end. At the point of sale, at the first point of sale at the marketplace, most stuff is fairly cheap. At the last point of sale, it could be three… between two and four times what it’s paid for. So, that’s what the average customer doesn’t think, They think if it’s dearer in the shop, the farmer’s making the money.
[Mike Ryan] I was talking to Senator Malcolm Roberts, and he was saying, just talking about how the consumer in the major metropolitan areas, they all think that the produce that they see almost is manufactured in the supermarket, but, you know, prior to that, you’ve got so many factors. I mean, from the farmer to the chain. Farmer, to the, what do you call it?
The grower. Not grower, the buyer who buys up for the land and then they on-sell it to someone else. And then it’s sold to the supermarket. You think from the farmer to the actual supermarket, ’cause my dad used to always say, he would love to be able to take out a shotgun with some pellets and get rid of those middlemen. Is it still the same headache and pain in the backside?
[Trevor Cross] The biggest problem is with the whole system, if you actually get out of the place what’s supposed to set the right price how do we know what the right price is? And I think the days when people were actually stealing at the first point of sale, I don’t think it’s there anymore because everyone’s fighting for a dollar. So they’re getting screwed down more and more. All the grower actually needs is probably about 20- 30-cents a kilo more and they become very sustainable. And that’s not a lot.
It’s only 2 to 3 dollars a box on average, and everyone’s paying bills, because the Ag industry, and this is not just what we do, It’s every Ag industry, there’s a lot of people get employed before it even gets to the farm. And then after it leaves the farm there’s a lot of people employed from transport, through to your retailers, your wholesalers, and then the processors… there’s many, many people relying on the farming industry.
[Mike Ryan]What are your thoughts of the future of farming, say, in Australia?
[Trevor Cross] Well, I know if we keep going down this track we can’t last much longer. Even our business now we’ve actually got 400 acres of nut trees, and we’ll probably continue to change over just because of the labour price and for our small profits we’re making out of employing all the people, we may as well not have them. We may as well just go to where it’s all mechanical.
So, I don’t know if my boys will actually take over and do what I do, ’cause it’s a seven-day-a-week job. You’ve got to be in amongst the people and see what’s happening. I actually think, even in this area around Bundaberg, there won’t be too much of this industry left within probably four or five years. I think the majors will be all gone.
[Mike Ryan] That’s just terrible, too, because once you have less growers like yourself then you’ve got this monopoly and the monopolies are not what we want. I mean, look at the US and you’ve got these multi-billion-dollar corporations that control the price of produce, although you go to a supermarket and they do the same thing there too, they screw down the grower, although the grower being a lot bigger than what they’ve dealt with, they’ve got their sort of, at least it’s coming up to almost 50-50 between the grower and the actual supermarket chain.
It’s a really, really tough life. What do you think is the most important thing in keeping our farming sector successful and growing? What do we actually need to do besides revise wages, for example, on the land. You can’t keep paying out 50%. You’re going to make no money.
[Trevor Cross] Yeah. Everyone’s entitled to money, Mike. The wage earner is entitled to money, and they all want to lead a good life, but we’ve just got to get a share of that sale price at the end. Basically, I think all growers need just a little bit more money, and it’s not a lot, a couple dollars a box, as I say, it’s not a lot of money. And then everyone’s happy because I don’t think any man who’s been on the land for all his life deserves to actually have the bank come and sell him up, because of the poor market prices. I think everyone can work together.
If capsicums or zucchinis or whatever, ’cause we’re only seasonal, we do about eight months a year in Bundaberg, and then the South is just finishing up now, they would have had the most horrible year in their life. And people have been on the land all their life and next minute they gotta sell their farms because of poor prices. It’s only a couple of dollars a box, they wouldn’t have needed much more and they’d be still viable.
[Mike Ryan] So what do you do, though? If you weren’t on the land, what would you do?
[Trevor Cross] I don’t really know what I would actually do cause I’m not much into fishing, I don’t like doing anything else. And so that’s what I call it, a hobby.
[Mike Ryan] An expensive hobby though, isn’t it?
[Trevor Cross] Yeah but most… a lot of farmers grow because they’re addicted to growing. That’s what they’ve been bred to do. They grow. And they show up nearly every day. So it’s a challenge because you’re challenged against the weather, challenged against people and you become a plumber an accountant, you know, almost doctor, sometimes. So there’s nothing you can’t actually do. A good farmer can do just about anything there is to do.
[Mike Ryan] If somebody was wanting to find out more about what you do, do you actually have a website we could go to and have a look, just to get an idea and appreciation what it’s all about.
[Trevor Cross] No, I would say I keep pretty well under cover but we could actually have a bit of a look at doing something if there’s people interested and actually do something.
[Mike Ryan] Yeah. We must do that. I’m sure you’ll handle the technology as well as my dad.
[Trevor Cross] I have to get someone to help me, yeah.
[Mike Ryan] Trevor, great chatting with you. All the best. Thanks for giving us your time today, and also say thank you to your wife in the background, she’s done a wonderful job.
[Trevor Cross] No worries. Thanks, Michael.
[Malcolm Roberts] The harsh reality is that we, as a nation, will either flourish or decline with our regional centres and with Australian farmers. Our farmers must make a profit to make their livelihoods sustainable. And that, after all, is where we get our food. Our rural and regional communities have unique challenges and need a different set of solutions to ensure fair and equitable access to basic services and to grow viable communities. Thank you for joining me Senator Malcolm Roberts on Our Nation Today.
Senate Estimates is a great chance for me to grill these climate agencies and get very specific about the evidence that they base their policies on.
This year, we saw yet again that they love to duck and weave, but won’t actually provide me with the evidence. I talked about this on Marcus Paul last week.
Senate Estimates Sessions: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/category/senate-estimates/march-2021/
[Announcer] Now on “Marcus Paul in the Morning” Senator Malcolm Roberts.
[Marcus] All right, 17 minutes away from eight o’clock. Good day, Malcolm. How are you, mate?
[Malcolm] I’m very well, thanks, Marcus. How are you?
[Marcus] Good, good, good. Now I see, you’ve got the Bureau of Meteorology, and also Malcolm Turnbull, and also the CSIRO in your sights this morning. Who do you want to pick on first?
[Malcolm] Let’s go with the CSIRO.
[Marcus] All right. What do you have to say about them? Of course, this argument about renewables costing us, what, 13 billion bucks a year or $1,300 per household.
[Malcolm] That’s in addition to the electricity bill, that’s the additional cost per household, $1,300. Marcus, there’s some really simple figures to understand. The median income in Australia is $49,000, so after tax, what’s that, 30 something?
[Marcus] Yeah.
[Malcolm] The chief executive of the CSIRO is paid a total per year, every year of $1,049,000.
[Marcus] Not bad.
[Malcolm] The group executive in charge of overseeing the climate area, the climate research, is on $613,000, more than the Prime Minister of Australia.
[Marcus] Yeah, not bad.
[Malcolm] I put to them very basic questions about their so-called science, they refused to answer. These were the first time that I had asked questions about these pieces of information that they gave to me last Senate estimates. I’ve never had an opportunity to ask them questions before about this. This is the first time. They refused to answer. The basic things were that they gave me five new references, in senate estimates in October, I asked them questions about this.
They refused to answer. They refused to answer a representative of the people. And the papers that they provided to me, Kaufman 2020, for example, this is the sort of crap that CSIRO dishes up, when the authors of that paper input their data on climate into their calculations, they omitted the first data point and put it in in reverse order, complete false. The second reference they gave me directly contradicts the claims that the CSIRO says that it’s supposed to be supporting.
The third reference said they made conclusions on one data point, and they took it out of context and went against the CSIRO’s own advice to me last October. So what I’m saying to you is we are paying someone $1,049,000 a year, we’re paying someone else $613,000 a year, people in Australia cannot afford this nonsense, and now we’ve got no evidence whatsoever.
The CSIRO has admitted that they have never said to any politician that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger to our planet. That’s what politicians are saying. Why is this, Marcus, people are paying dearly for destroying manufacturing all because of this rubbish?
[Marcus] All right, now tell me about the Bureau of Meteorology.
[Malcolm] Well, here we go again, another government bureaucracy that’s claiming about climate. When they measure data, temperature, rainfall, et cetera, at a weather station, they also have metadata about the weather station that tells you, for example, how many times a station has been moved, because when it moves, it can have an effect on temperature and other recording devices. Townsville has been moved eight times.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s metadata says it’s been moved once. Metadata as well at Rockhampton moved four times, the Bureau says it’s been moved once. Cairns moved six times, the Bureau says it’s been moved twice. Charleville been moved four times, the Bureau says twice. The Bureau of Meteorology and its own peer reviewers fail to detect and discuss these glaring inaccuracies.
How can we rely on the Bureau of Meteorology which says temperatures are increasing, but they haven’t increased since 1995 globally, which is about almost 30 years, and our temperatures today are lower than in the 1880s and 1890s in Australia. I mean, we’re being fed this nonsense, people are paying for it, it’s destroying our manufacturing capacity all because of atrocious governments and people won’t hold these people accountable.
[Marcus] Well, there are some grave consequences, as you say, for these glaring errors and policies devised on numbers that are given by the Bureau of Meteorology, along with the CSIRO. So there we go, I’m glad we got you there asking these hard questions, Malcolm, but you don’t seem to get much support from those that are in power.
[Malcolm] That’s a really good point.
[Marcus] Why don’t you?
[Malcolm] Angus Taylor is the Minister for Energy.
[Marcus] Yes.
[Malcolm] He admits now, two or three weeks ago he admitted that he is afraid, he’s scared of what’s happening, with our reliability of power supply, security of power supply, the cost of power. He’s admitted all this. I know for a fact, in conversations with Angus Taylor, that he’s a sceptic about us affecting the climate, but he is peddling this nonsense.
Mark Butler, the former spokesman from the Labour Party, I’ve challenged him to a debate, ran away from me. I challenged The Greens 10 and a half years ago, and every day since I’ve been in the Senate, sorry, almost weekly since I’ve been in the Senate this time they’ve failed to provide the evidence.
There’s just a whole lot of groupthink. I wrote to about 20 MPS in senior positions, Labour, Liberal, National, and Greens, not one of them was able to provide me with any evidence that we have to have these policies, not one.
[Marcus] Now let’s move to Malcolm Turnbull. Hang on, there, Malcolm Turnbull, of course, former Prime Minister of Australia, claims that the demand for coal is declining, but no one has told Africa they’re building 1,250 more coal plants by the year 2030. Mines are devastating the landscape in the Hunter Valley. Well, is that true?
Reportedly more about his opposition perhaps to the Mount Pleasant coal mine and the extension plan for it which happens to be near Malcolm Turnbull’s own interest including a grazing property. The mining industry is shortening lives by reducing air quality, and taxpayers, of course, you say are left with huge environmental remediation bills covered by mining bonds. Now last week, I don’t know what was going on in the New South Wales government with the Liberals and Nationals appointing Malcolm Turnbull to this role.
You know, zero net emissions by 2050, we had Matt Kean at the centre of it all, and for some reason, somehow both John Barilaro and the Premier of New South Wales went along with this. There were a couple of dissenting voices, but Malcolm was apparently tipped to take this job. Then there was a massive back flip whether it came from pressure from the media or from One Nation’s Mark Latham. I’m not sure. I think it’s a mix of all of those.
[Malcolm] I think you’re right. Malcolm Turnbull has a lot of personal interests, of benefit to him and his family, from pushing their renewables bandwagon. He’s got no evidence, never has had any evidence for pushing their renewables. He’s got no evidence for having to shut down coal mines. And he himself attributed the dumping of his new job to Mark Latham and the right-wing media, but you know, that’s typical Malcolm Turnbull. He can’t look at his own policy and he can’t look at himself, and he’s become a pariah.
[Marcus] Yeah, look, I understand what you’re saying, I get that, but let’s be honest, he’s half right.
[Malcolm] In what way?
[Marcus] Well, of course, he’s right.
[Malcolm] In what way?
[Marcus] Well, until people down the road from us 2GB and the Telegraph and a few others started jumping up and down about it this was gonna go through. I mean, I would tend to think that unless there was a by-election just around the corner in the upper Hunter, perhaps this bloke, Malcolm Turnbull, might’ve gone on.
[Malcolm] Well, I’m not gonna argue with that, I think that you’re making some pretty good comments, but Malcolm Turnbull himself blamed Mark Latham for standing up and speaking the truth. That’s the pressure that Mark brings. Mark’s a very good speaker, he gets his facts and he went straight into bat. Barilaro and Berejiklian are the ones. How could they possibly sign off on this man, Turnbull, being put in this position? But think about this, Marcus.
[Marcus] Yeah.
[Malcolm] Australia’s total electricity coal-fired power station capacity in this country was 25.2 gigawatts in 2017. So it’s less than that now with the closure of a couple of coal-fired power stations in Victoria, it’s less than that. China alone opened 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants last year alone, so almost double what our total capacity is. The world has opened up 50.3 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity last year alone. India is opening up on average around 17 gigawatts. India itself and China are opening up combined about three times our total capacity of coal-fired power stations.
[Marcus] And the argument, of course, is, Malcolm, I do need to go, the argument, of course, is that if they don’t get our coal, they’ll get it from elsewhere.
[Malcolm] Correct.
[Marcus] Yeah, all right, mate, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.
[Malcolm] Okay, mate, you’re welcome.
[Marcus] Talk soon.
[Malcolm] See you, Marcus.
[Marcus] See you, mate. Bye-bye. There he is, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. Of course, David Lazell…
I have asked CSIRO time and time again to provide the evidence that Carbon Dioxide from human activity is a danger to the planet and they still haven’t given me the evidence. Like I do every estimates session, I sent the CSIRO the questions I wanted them to answer in advance so that they could be prepared. This round however CSIRO was especially belligerent in not answering my questions. I have formally lodged them as questions on notice. That means if they refuse to answer them this time the CSIRO could be held in contempt of the Senate.
Senator ROBERTS: While your annual remuneration package, Dr Marshall, is $1,049,000 and Dr Mayfield’s is $613,000, the medium income in Australia is just $49,000. Government policies based on your advice are hurting everyday Australians. You may not feel the impact, yet 25 million Australians do feel it. For some, it is now excruciating. With your pay comes accountability. I’m a representative and a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, and as such it’s my duty to hold agencies that are advising on government policy accountable, particularly agencies advising governments over the past 30 years on policies that are now costing billions of dollars and impacting our nation and all Australians to the extent of trillions of dollars.
Each of my questions is fairly short. In your answers to my questions in person and in writing, on notice, at last October’s supplementary estimates hearings, you cited seven papers, attempting to justify your assertion that the rate of the most recent period of temperature rise was unprecedented over the past 10,000 years. You did not specify the location of the basis of your claim. So, we went through all the papers, and we actually contacted Lecavalier and got the data from the authors and uncovered many startling issues and questions that raise serious doubts about CSIRO’s conclusions, which appear unfounded at best. Detailed examination of your references reveals some startling facts. Firstly, are you aware, for example, that Kaufman 2020, which you cited, in importing data from the Dahl-Jensen borehole, omitted the first data point and then loaded the remaining data points in the reverse time order? Are you aware of that?
Dr Marshall: Chair, if I may, because the senator has said a lot there—the preamble to the question—CSIRO exists to help all Australians, all 25 million, and we have done so for the hundred years of our existence but perhaps never more so than in the last year, when we’ve protected citizens, we’ve developed vaccines—
Senator ROBERTS: I’m not asking about COVID.
CHAIR: No, you had a very long preamble, Senator Roberts—which is unlike you—but let’s just let the official respond.
Dr Marshall: We’ve created personal protective equipment to protect frontline health workers, and we’ve helped government, both state and federal, to better understand the spread of the disease, its longevity on surfaces and how to best protect our people. As a result of all that work, Australia has come through this pandemic in remarkably good shape. There are crop yields that are at record highs despite drought, despite other impacts of a variable climate. So, Senator, we are deeply concerned about the wellbeing of all 25 million Australians. And I can bet that you, Senator, right now have at least three things on your person that were created by CSIRO science that maybe you don’t even know you have but that are benefiting your life.
So, whatever we are paid, which is decided by the rem tribunal, not by us, is because everything we do is designed to benefit Australia. And, like you, Senator, we want to ensure that all Australians, not just your constituents but all Australians, have the lowest possible cost of energy and the best possible life that our science and technology can create for them. And believe me when I say that when we do things like the GenCost report it’s all about helping industry and governments to make the right decisions for the future energy mix so that we can have a lower cost of energy, so that Australian industry can have a lower cost of energy, so that we can produce more products and generate more revenue here in Australia rather than shipping raw materials overseas and buying them back at a 10-times-higher price. So, we have the same mission, Senator, as you.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got a lot of information from you but not an answer to my question. Are you aware, for example, that in your response to the Senate committee as a result of Senate estimates the paper that you cited, Kaufman 2020, in importing data from the Dahl-Jensen borehole, omitted the first data point altogether and loaded the remaining data points in the reverse time order? Are you aware of that?
Dr Marshall: Dr Mayfield might be. I’m certainly not.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for the answer.
Dr Mayfield: Senator, you’d be aware that we’ve probably met on a number of occasions.
Senator ROBERTS: We have.
Dr Mayfield: We’ve had quite a lot of exchange of information, whether through this forum or through questions on notice or letters that you provided to us prior to estimates. So we’ve done that over quite a long period, and in that time our observation is that you don’t agree with our answers. We can’t change that, but we also can’t change our answers, because we’re very comfortable that they’re based on the best scientific knowledge and scientific process. In the response we gave you earlier today with regard to the most recent questions, which we tabled through the committee, I think we will have to fundamentally disagree. That is the bottom line.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s a simple question: are you aware that Kaufman 2020—
Dr Mayfield: We’re aware of your argument, but it doesn’t change the conclusions we make.
Senator ROBERTS: in importing data from the Dahl-Jensen borehole, omitted the first data point altogether and loaded the remaining data points in the reverse time order? That’s what you presented to the Senate as evidence. Are you aware of that?
Dr Mayfield: We’ve also presented a lot of other information to you, Senator, on many occasions. The bottom line is that you never agree.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll get to that. Are you aware of that error?
Dr Mayfield: We know what we believe in. We know what we understand through the scientific methods.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on.
Dr Mayfield: That’s what we’ll stick with. So we won’t be moving away from our answer. We will have to agree to disagree.
Senator ROBERTS: I note that neither of you answered my question. No. 2: are you aware that Kaufman 2020 disagrees with another of your references—that is pages 2K 2013, the reconstruction that has no uptick in recent temperatures? Are you aware of that?
Dr Mayfield: We’re aware of all of these claims through the various interactions that we have with you, Senator. We’ve provided our answers. Those are the answers we have. They’re not going to change.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you aware—No. 3—that one of your references, the North report 2006, directly contradicts CSIRO’s claim—your claim—that the latest rate of temperature rise is unprecedented? Are you aware of that?
Dr Mayfield: Senator, again, we’ve been through all of this. We can go through every single question that you make, but it’s the same general response: we’ve provided our best response, we’re very comfortable with those responses and the basis of them, and we don’t have any basis on which we would change them. We’ll have to agree to disagree—bottom line.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m happy for you to keep asking if you really need to, but we are behind schedule.
Senator ROBERTS: Next question: Lecavalier, which is one of your key papers, from 2017, makes a conclusion that hangs on one data point from one short ice core, in contradiction to CSIRO’s clear statement last October to me in writing. We obtained Lecavalier’s data from the authors and uncovered many startling issues. In Lecavalier 2017, proxy data was used for recent times, when more accurate thermometer data from many Arctic thermometer stations is readily available. Yet in response to our comments about Marcott 2013, which you cited, in Senate supplementary hearings last October you said that thermometer measurements, when available, should be used instead of proxies. We agree. When the proxy is replaced with an amalgam of Arctic thermometer measurements, there is no period of unprecedented temperature rise in Lecavalier, which you cited. Why?
Dr Mayfield: Again, we’ve been through this many times. We have given you our answer.
Senator ROBERTS: I will go to the next one, because the chair wants me to hurry up. In citing Marcott 2013, how did the CSIRO overlook mentioning the author’s own statement written in the paper:
The result suggests that at longer periods, more variability is preserved, with essentially no variability observed at periods shorter than 300 years.
So, for periods shorter than 100 years, no variability is preserved in the data. The authors explain that variability is not preserved for periods shorter than 2,000 years and, for periods of 300 years or less in duration, no variability passes through the process that Marcott used to analyse his data. Given the duration of the most recent period of temperature rise is just 40 years—and that’s Marcott citing Mann 2008 in his own paper and the paper you cited—there is no validity to CSIRO’s claim that the rate of recent temperature rise is unprecedented. All eight of your papers are completely flawed. There’s no evidence in your papers—not one of them. Why are you misleading the Senate and holding us in contempt?
Dr Mayfield: We are not misleading the Senate.
Senator ROBERTS: You are, sir.
Dr Mayfield: We’ve made our responses known to you in a number of meetings.
Senator ROBERTS: Ha, ha, ha! These are simple facts.
Dr Mayfield: And we’ve had climate scientists talk to you, and you continue to ignore our answers, and we can’t change that.
Senator ROBERTS: This is why I don’t accept your answers.
Senator CANAVAN: I haven’t heard the answers and I’d be interested in them, Dr Mayfield. I think Senator Roberts has raised some interesting points. Can we all hear the answers?
Dr Marshall: It might be easier just to look at the State of the Climate report that we produce every two years in partnership with BoM.
Senator ROBERTS: We’ll get to that one, don’t worry.
Dr Marshall: The data’s in there, you can see it. It’s not theoretical, it’s measured.
Senator ROBERTS: My eighth question: you cited the IPCC, the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change from the UN, assessment report 5, working group 1. This is an irrelevant citation as the UNIPCC AR5 WG1 summary for policymakers itself contains no reference to rates of temperature rise in the last 10,000 years. That’s the only unprecedented change you claim to be in climate. Out of all the meetings we’ve had, all the letters exchanged, that’s the only one you claim is unprecedented, yet it doesn’t mention it at all. There is no reference even to the Holocene period or the last 10,000 years. Most citations in working group 1 are for only the last 1,000 years. Can CSIRO explain the inclusion of this irrelevant citation that contains no logical scientific point relevant to your claim? Can you explain why you’re using that?
Dr Mayfield: Again, you would be familiar with three meetings that we had. We had climate scientists there, we went through the arguments with you. We’ve been there, we’ve done that.
Senator CANAVAN: Chair, can I raise as a point of order? I don’t think it’s appropriate for a witness to refer to private briefings they’ve had with another senator. Senator Roberts is asking a question in this format—
Senator ROBERTS: I don’t mind.
Senator CANAVAN: in this framework. Unless there’s some public interest that’s being claimed here, I think the senator deserves an answer.
Senator ROBERTS: I got a lot from his answer, Matt, thank you.
Dr Mayfield: The record of those meetings has been tabled previously, as has the response to your various sets of questions, so there’s a lot of information that’s been tabled.
CHAIR: The fact is that this back and forwards has going on for at least the whole time I’ve been on the committee. I’ve got to say, Senator Roberts, I admire your perseverance, but I think it’s getting to the point of
being unproductive at a point in time when we are more than half an hour behind schedule and we have other important witnesses we want to devote time to.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, I’ll wrap up with two more. Your reference, pages 2K2013, is an irrelevant citation as it covers only the last 2,000 years—we asked for 10,000—and cannot support your claim of what you say is unprecedented over the last 10,000 years. The second-half of this question is: your reference, pages 2K2017, is an irrelevant citation as it covers only the last 2,000 years and cannot support your claim of what is unprecedented over the last 10,000 years. Why did you cite those two references?
Dr Mayfield: Again, the climate scientists that work with the CSIRO have an understanding of the science literature. They’re making those references because they add to the argument. As I said earlier, you don’t agree with the answers and we can’t change that.
Dr Marshall: Are you worried that somehow we’re giving bad advice to the government about what’s going to be the lowest cost of energy?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, definitely.
Dr Marshall: Because that’s what you said—
Senator ROBERTS: And on climate policy that’s driving the destruction of our economy.
Dr Marshall: That question has nothing to do with any of the modelling that you’re talking about.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m talking about the underpinning advice that’s driving policies on climate and energy—
Dr Marshall: So am I.
Senator ROBERTS: the underpinning climate advice.
Dr Marshall: So am I, and it’s about the cost of solar, hydrogen, nuclear, coal, gas—
Senator ROBERTS: Dealing with property rights—
Dr Marshall: That’s got nothing to do with climate modelling.
Senator ROBERTS: destruction of our manufacturing sector—that’s what’s underpinning—
Dr Marshall: The future cost of energy is about the economics and the technology and the science that we produce.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m not talking just about energy. I’m talking about climate science that underpins the destruction of our economy, including energy, but also property rights, water resources, right across our country. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re paid $1,049,000 a year in remuneration, and we’re getting this as science. It’s junk.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you’ve made your point. Dr Marshall, I’ll let you reply, but then we are going to call it a night.
Dr Marshall: It is a fact that CSIRO’s science is in the top one per cent of the world, in some cases in the top
0.1 per cent. It’s a fact.
Senator ROBERTS: That is spurious—
Dr Marshall: It is a fact.
Senator ROBERTS: and climate science is not science. You have not given me any of the data, not a bit.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts.
Dr Marshall: I will give you the data to substantiate every word I just said. I will give it to you.
I’m down in Canberra at Senate Estimates this week. Over many years now I have consistently grilled the Bureau of Meteorology at Estimates over their methodology in ‘homogenising’ or changing raw temperature data. These changes include adjustments to make the recorded temperatures colder in earlier years and warmer in more recent years, making the supposed warming trend seem worse.
Thanks Senator Green, Senator Roberts.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thank you Chair. Thank you all for attending today. You got my questions in writing, Dr. Johnson?
[Johnson]
I did Sir.
[Malcolm Roberts]
The first question was please confirm whether you agree that any data adjustments need to be rigorous, independently replicable, and accurately supported with metadata.
[Johnson]
Senator, I might just ask my colleague Dr. Stone to take those questions. Thank you.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Sure.
[Dr Stone]
Yeah, thanks Senator.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Nice to see you again.
[Dr Stone]
Yeah, likewise The Bureau does agree that homogenization adjustments need to be rigorous and homogenization needs to be independently replicable using agreed peer reviewed methods, but it doesn’t actually need, it’s not a requirement that it’s supported by metadata as you’ve suggested. The purpose of the homogenization is to adjust for discontinuities where they’re detected, as I was describing earlier, in comparison with nearest neighbours. Metadata such as documentary evidence of a site move tells you that you might like to check for discontinuity, but it doesn’t tell you to make the adjustments themselves. So adjustment occurs only where a discontinuity in observations crosses what I referred to earlier as a threshold of significance. So it’s possible for homogenization to occur without metadata. And it’s also possible that metadata can describe a situation where there has been a change in observation practise, but homogenization isn’t required because that change doesn’t result in a discontinuity in observation. So it’s actually the discontinuity in observation that’s critical in the determinant of whether or not a homogenization occurs and the scale and direction of the change.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Okay, thank you. Moving on to some we’ve got data on many more which are similar, but the Townsville Weather Station according to the BOM’s metadata said it’s had one move. Whereas in fact, it’s had eight. The Rockhampton Weather Station has had according to BOM, one move. Whereas in fact, it’s had four. The Cairns Weather Station has had according to BOM. two moves the fact that it’s moved six times and the Chaliver Weather Station, BOM says it’s moved twice and it’s at four moves. Why did BOM and the various peer reviewers fail to detect and discuss these inaccuracies?
[Dr Stone]
Sorry, I missed the last part.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Why did the Bureau of Meteorology and the various peer reviewers fail to detect and discuss these inaccuracies in the metadata?
[Dr Stone]
Yeah, no, thank you. They’re not inaccuracies in metadata. So the metadata that either exists or it doesn’t, and in the cases you’ve described, there is instances where a shift in the med station has occurred and there’s not metadata that describes that. So it’s not actually in an inaccuracy in the metadata. And third of what I was saying too earlier, whether or not there’s metadata doesn’t impact on the integrity of their marginalisation process because it’s actually looking for that discontinuity in observations that determines whether or not there is a marginalisation that occurs.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That surely if there’s data about the movement of stations and that data is inaccurate, then the metadata is wrong.
[Dr Stone]
Now, in this case that the metadata is not present. It would be wrong if it said that there was a shift and there wasn’t one. What you’re describing is where a change hasn’t been recorded. So there’s not metadata that relates to it.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Right.
[Dr Stone]
There’s a difference.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So the BOM’s claim that has moved once in Townsville where the station moved once is not accurate because there’s no metadata on them?
[Dr Stone]
Sorry, we don’t claim it’s been moved once but we have metadata that shows that it was moved once.
Yeah. So we wouldn’t claim that there have I haven’t been shifted. We don’t have that data.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So you’ve got metadata for only one move. Whereas in fact, we know it’s been eight moves.
[Dr Stone]
We have metadata for Townsville. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you how many of those that we have metadata for but the principle remains the same. There are instances in the historical record where there’ve been changes made and they weren’t recorded at the time.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So what are the consequences of these areas specifically in terms of recording weather, data such as temperature?
[Dr Stone]
Yeah. I know there is. I just want to be clear about that. So the presence or absence of metadata, doesn’t imply an error.
[Malcolm Roberts]
If the station’s been moved and it hasn’t been noted in the metadata, then it’s not even recognised.
[Dr Stone]
Correct. But if we’re talking about the impact of that on the homogenization process, it doesn’t result in an error because the homogenization only occurs where there’s a statistical discontinuity in the data detected. So you can have moves that don’t result in homogenization being triggered, whether or not there’s metadata and vice versa. So it doesn’t be, I can be crystal clear. It doesn’t result in inaccuracies in the estimation of climate trends. If there’s metadata or not.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Has or not. Has BOM done any analysis to quantify the effects of the station moves especially the ones that it didn’t know about?
[Dr Stone]
No, absolutely. So, as I say, the process of homogenization actually looks back through the records for a given station, looks for discontinuity and measurements compared with nearest neighbours. So it steps through. And does that, so a high proportion of the homogenization changes that are made aren’t triggered by metadata they’re triggered by, as I mentioned, a discontinuity in the observations. And that’s determined by comparing with a large number of nearest neighbours, which we can do with temperature because temperature is reasonably conservative across geographic space. And it’s why, for example, you can’t really homogenize for rainfall because it’s much more spatially viable.
[Chair]
So do you have anymore questions Senator Roberts.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes. I’ve got a couple of more questions, Chair. You said you’ve been able to analyse these past records. Could you please provide for each of the four sites that I’ve mentioned that’s Townsville, Rockhampton, Cairns, and Charleville the quantified analysis that Bureau of Meteorology has done and document the independent peer review process used just on notice, please.
[Dr Stone]
That’s all on the website. Yep, no problem.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thank you. Last pair of questions, Chair. What are the specific quantified consequences of BOM’s inaccuracies on CSIROs use of BOM data? I’m particularly interested because CSIRO has admitted to me that it does no due diligence of its own on temperature data that it merely accepts from the Bureau of Meteorology.
[Dr Stone]
Yeah. Thanks for the question. As I described, the presence or absence of metadata doesn’t result in inaccuracies in the homogenization process. So inaccuracies have not been passed on to CSIRO or any other user because of concerns about metadata. It’s fundamentally a statistical process.
[Malcolm Roberts]
What are the consequences on the government policy and the general assumption that Australia temperatures are increasing?
[Dr Stone]
Yeah. As I said, so if the question is about the accuracy or otherwise of the estimates, presence or absence of metadata isn’t material. And, you know, I can confirm the global trend for warming is around 1.1 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial period.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And when you say pre-industrial, what year?
[Dr Stone]
1850.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thank you.
[Dr Stone]
And–
[Malcolm Roberts]
It’s just at the end of the little ice age.
[Dr Stone]
What I’m seeking to do is describe the difference between the global trend, the homogenized trend and the raw observation trends. So the global trend is around 1.1, the unadjusted trend is 0.95 Degrees Celsius plus or minus 0.24 over the same period. And the homogenized trend is 1.44 plus or minus .24 So neither the raw nor the homogenized trend differ from the, significantly from the estimate of the global trend.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Okay, thank you. Are you aware just by coincidence that CSIRO has admitted to me that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented? And then after it admitted that it said that what is unprecedented is the, they claimed is the rate of recent rates of temperature rise. Yet the papers they gave us, not one of them shows that. And two of the papers show that past temperature rise, rate of past temperature rise has been warmer than the recent temperature rise which ended about 1995.
[Dr Stone]
Yeah. Thank you. I haven’t seen the CSRO papers or–
[Malcolm Roberts]
We’ll have to have a chat.
Thank you.
Electric vehicles might be okay for suburb hopping in big cities, but I doubt there is a farm in Australia that would be able to run without any petrol or diesel. The Greens’ calls to ‘rapidly transition to electric vehicles‘ for their net zero economy by 2035 shows they have no clue of the energy requirements in transport, industry and agriculture.
Let’s have a bit of fun with some facts. Neither H2O, water, nor CO2, carbon dioxide, is a pollutant. Neither water nor carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The two products from burning hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil, natural gas—are water and carbon dioxide. We have carbon in every cell of our bodies. The term ‘organic’ refers to something that contains carbon. Earth: the thing that makes our planet so livable, the thing that makes our planet so unique, is the fact that we have more carbon concentrated on our planet than is the case across the universe.
Carbon is essential for life, but the Greens don’t understand that carbon is not carbon dioxide. They tell us that we need to cut our carbon dioxide from the use of coal, oil and natural gas, but then they talk about carbon. Carbon dioxide is a gas. Carbon is a solid in every cell of your body.
So let’s deal with some facts. Let’s have a bit of fun. Carbon dioxide is just 0.04 per cent of Earth’s air. That is 4/100ths of a per cent. Carbon dioxide is scientifically classified as a trace gas, because there’s so little of it. There’s barely a trace of it. Now, some people are going to say, ‘Oh, but cyanide can kill you with just a trace.’ That’s true. That’s a chemical effect. But the claimed effect of carbon dioxide from the Greens of global warming, climate catastrophe and the greatest existential threat that we now face is a physical effect. A trace gas has no physical effect that can be recorded, as I’ll show you in a minute.
Next point: carbon dioxide is non-toxic and not noxious. It’s highly beneficial to and essential for all plants on this planet. Everything green that’s natural relies upon carbon dioxide, and it benefits when carbon dioxide levels are far higher than now. Carbon dioxide is colourless, odourless and tasteless. Nature produces—and this is from the United Nations climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—97 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced annually on our planet. That means that nature produces 32 times more than the entire human production of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide does not discolour the air. Carbon dioxide does not impair the quality of water or soil. None of what I’m talking about is new. I’ve compiled it, but none of it’s new. Carbon dioxide does not create light, create heat, create noise or create radioactivity. It doesn’t distort our senses. It does not degrade the environment, nor impair its usefulness, nor render our environment offensive.
Carbon dioxide doesn’t harm ecosystems and, in fact, is essential for all ecosystems. Carbon dioxide does not harm plants and animals, nor humans. In fact, we put it in our kids’ soft drink. We put it in our champagne. We put it in our beer. We put it in soda water—we carbonate it by putting carbon dioxide in there. It’s essential for all plants and animals. Carbon dioxide does not cause discomfort, instability, wooziness or disorders of any kind. It does not accumulate. It does not upset nature’s balance. It’s essential for nature and life on this planet. It remains in the air for only a short time before nature cycles it into plants, animal tissue, the oceans and natural accumulations. It does not contaminate, apart from nature’s extremely high and concentrated volumes of carbon dioxide from some volcanos and even then it’s only locally and briefly under rare natural conditions when in concentrations and amounts are far higher than anything humans can produce.
Carbon dioxide is not a foreign substance. In the past, on this planet, under the current atmosphere, there have been times when carbon dioxide levels were 130 times higher than the concentration in the earth today. In fact, in the last 200 years, scientists have measured carbon dioxide levels up to 40 per cent higher than they are today. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, from the UN ignores those measurements, which were taken, in some cases, by Nobel Prize winners—science prize winners. All they do instead is take one reading from one place over the last 70 years.
As you can see from the list I’ve just read, carbon dioxide is not pollution. The Greens are talking about doing an inquiry into carbon, yet they say it’s the carbon dioxide that’s causing this climate change that’s supposedly going on. Let’s look at something else then, as carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
Let’s have a look at this climate change crisis that the Greens are talking about. I’m unique in this Senate for holding the CSIRO accountable. All of the other senators have not done their jobs. Former Senator Ian Macdonald, from the Senate in 2016, pointed that out to me. He pointed out that no-one in this parliament ever debated the science until I arrived. We still haven’t had the debate, because I’ve challenged the Greens and they have gone without responding to my challenge for a debate more than 125 days. Senator Waters has gone more than 10¼ years without responding to my challenge for a debate. They won’t debate me, because they haven’t got the science. Let’s listen to the people that the Greens rely on for their science.
I have cross-examined the CSIRO. I’ve had three presentations and several sessions at Senate estimates. In their first presentation under my cross-examination the CSIRO admitted that they had never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a threat or a danger. Never. That means we don’t need any of these policies. Let’s go to the next session we had with the CSIRO. Each of these sessions were 2½ to three hours long. The CSIRO said that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented—that’s referring to the blip that ended back in 1995. We have had stasis of temperatures since then—no warming in the last 26 years. The current temperatures are not unprecedented.
My third point is that the CSIRO admitted that they and other bodies around the world rely, for their predictions, on unvalidated, erroneous computer models. That says two things. Firstly, the models are wrong. They’re erroneous and invalidated, yet they’re using them to make projections. Secondly, it confirms they don’t have the evidence. If they had the evidence, they would have presented it. Instead, they’ve come up with some lame models, which have already failed.
The fourth thing that I will mention about the so-called science is that, when they failed to provide me with the empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects the climate and needs to be cut, I gave them a very simple test. I asked them to show me anything unprecedented in the earth’s climate in the last 10,000 years. They failed that. I then gave them the absolutely simplest goal of providing me with empirical scientific evidence showing that there has been a statistically significant change to any factor in earth’s climate. They failed that. They can’t even point to a change in climate, because we all know that climate varies quite naturally, most of it cyclically, but sometimes a combination of cycles makes it look like it’s highly random. That’s the point. Not only that, there are scientists whom I’ve communicated with directly, including members who are lead authors for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such as Dr John Christy. He was a lead author until he left the United Nations climate body because of the corruption. He was disgusted and sickened by it. These and many other scientists have confirmed to me that nowhere in the world has anyone ever presented any empirical scientific evidence showing that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut—not NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, not the UK Met Office, not the Bureau of Meteorology, not the CSIRO, not any university, not any academic, not any science paper and not any journal. Check for yourself and tell me if I’m wrong.
The third thing I want to say is that the Greens lunatic policies are not based on science. You’ll notice that Senator Rice, in her comments, never once mentioned any proof of causation. Instead, as substitutes for science, they use emotion, stories, fantasies, dreams and promises. That’s all they have. Policy needs to be based on specific, quantified cause and effect—this much carbon dioxide is growing because of humans, and this much is the impact. That has never been presented anywhere in the world. The CSIRO’s failed three times with me, and it has never been done by anyone. Once we have that measured effect, which no-one has produced so far, then and only then can we shape a policy. Then and only then can we measure the progress along the road of implementing that policy. Without that, it’s fundamentally flawed. Then, if we had the connection, specified and quantified, we can cost it to see the benefits of Senator Rice’s dreams and fantasies versus the impact on our human species of this climate madness that people are going on with. As a result of this madness, both the Liberal-National government and the Labor Party have driven our electricity prices from being the lowest in the world to the highest in the world, all on unicorn farts and rainbows, and nothing else—nothing substantial; claims of carbon pollution.
Then we have this telling factor. The No. 1 factor that drove the rapid improvement in human’s standard of living over the last 170 years was the relentless decrease in the price of energy from 1850 until the mid-nineties. Since then, in Australia, we have gone the other way. We’ve started to increase prices. We’ve now doubled and tripled prices for electricity in some areas and nothing has changed. Coal-fired power stations have become more efficient. Yet we have an increase in price because of the artificial regulations and the artificial impediments on the most productive and efficient source of electricity generation and the subsidies for the dreams of solar and wind, which are inherently high and will never catch up with coal, hydro or nuclear.
We had a relentless decrease in the price of electricity over 170 years until 25 years ago. That relentless decrease in the price of electricity and energy meant an increase in productivity and an increase in wealth. That’s what has led to humans now living lives that are longer, safer, easier, more comfortable and more healthy and having far more choices than anyone could ever have imagined. This Greens lunacy, calling carbon dioxide a ‘carbon’—calling a gas a solid—is driving a decarbonisation that is, in effect, deindustrialisation. Look around us. What will disappear is all the material benefits we’ve had over the last 150 years.
Opinion and emotion are not science. There is no need to have this reference to the committee, because there is no science underpinning the Greens’ call for this reference. We need to get back to the facts, get back to straight logic, stop dreaming, think about the many people who benefit from the wonderful hydrocarbon fuels—natural gas, coal and oil—and look after the people of this planet.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I need to say clearly that the climate change agenda seeks to mislead well-meaning Australians with pseudoscience to introduce and hide an economic and social agenda that Australians would otherwise reject. Senator Rice’s motion does mischief. Australia does not have a carbon budget. The Senate has not voted for a carbon budget. The coalition’s supposed climate action plan cap that underpins government policy does not include a carbon budget.
Our international agreements do not include a carbon budget. The only place one can find a climate budget is in the Greens’ own little parallel universe, where the aspiring elites in the Greens are in control of an economy that is not only green but rancid. The devastation that will be caused to our economy by the measures the Greens propose in order to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will destroy our economy, destroy jobs and steal opportunity from our children.
The insult to real scientists is that Senator Rice calls climate change a science based agenda. No, it’s not—definitely not. The argument in favour of a looming climate disaster is based on unvalidated computer models—nothing else. These are the same models that have failed repeatedly and miserably to predict temperature movement.
The largest single driver of climate is the sun, which has moved into a solar minimum that is tracking the Dalton minimum, when the Thames froze over and crops around the world failed. In fact, crops are failing now. Northern China is experiencing widespread hunger, as exceptional cold destroyed the winter cereal crop. Australia, on the other hand, has moved from a dry cycle to a wet cycle. This is not climate change; it’s a natural cycle.
I have challenged the Greens on many occasions to prove their position with empirical scientific evidence—data—and they have repeatedly been unable to. Indeed, today is day No. 502 of my challenge in the Senate to the Greens to simply provide the scientific evidence for their claims and for their alarm and to debate me on the science. Look at them all, looking at their phones; they won’t look at me. I challenged the current Greens Senate leader 10¼ years ago, and nothing.
That is more than a decade, and nothing. I notice that world-renowned scientist Tony Heller, who relies on solid data, has today challenged the Greens to a debate on social media. That’s not going to happen either. And now we see the Nats. Well, that’s another joke. So the Greens have no carbon budget and they have no idea.
One Nation will not support the motion. Senator Hanson-Young’s motion proposes to kill off jobs in South Australia. South Australia is a low-opportunity economy because the Greens have stopped billions of dollars of investment in ecotourism, agriculture and mining.
The Greens support for wind farms has endangered species of large birds drawn into the turbine blades and their land management policies directly contributed to the catastrophic loss of millions of native animals in the Kangaroo Island fire—millions!
The Greens are no friend to Australian animals, no friend to the poor who need jobs and no friend to mum and dad farmers who produce food for us to eat. It will be a matter for the government of South Australia to assess the quarry expansion proposal.
Motion 953: https://parlwork.aph.gov.au/motions/e16ad7ce-e361-eb11-b85f-005056b57e20
Senator Malcolm Roberts’ motion today in support of the coal mining industry is to help the voters of the Hunter decide who they can believe and who they can’t.
One Nation has consistently backed coal-fired power stations in our energy mix as it is one of the most affordable and reliable energy sources for Australia.
Senator Roberts said, “Thanks to One Nation’s relentless support for coal, the Nationals have clearly had a light bulb moment in their recent support for coal-fired power stations.”
Senator Canavan, leading the charge for the National’s renewed support, stated on Twitter in September 2020 that “the Hunter Valley has the best thermal coal in the world” and calls on the Morrison Government to build a coal fired power station in the Hunter.”
Senator Roberts added, “Voters need to look closely at the hypocrisy of the Nationals’ message; at a federal level there is a sudden spruiking for coal, but at a state level the Nationals continue to pursue closing Liddell coal power plant in 2023.
“Closing Liddell will result in blackouts as nearly 10% of the national power grid will go offline.”
There has been a conga line of National politicians turning up in the Hunter for damage control after One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds received more votes than the Nationals in the 2019 election. Senator Roberts said, “Voters in the Hunter need to know who the real supporters for the coal mining industry are and my motion today will divide the Chamber along those support lines.”
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