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One Nation calls for an Inquiry into Project Iron Boomerang.

One Nation has submitted a motion to be voted on by the Senate today Monday to hold an inquiry into Project Iron Boomerang (PIB).

This visionary project will secure Australia’s manufacturing, employment and energy security for generations.

With 70,000 jobs during construction and 40,000 breadwinner jobs created once operational PIB is the jobs solution the Prime Minister is looking for.

This week I talk to Ian Plimer for a full two hours and dive even deeper into the global warming fraud.

Transcript part 1 (click here to go to part 2)

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show.

Speaker 2:

On Today’s News Talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, good afternoon or good morning or good evening or good night, wherever you are around this marvellous world of ours, this is Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk radio, tntradio.live. Thank you for having me as your guest. Whether it’s in your car, your kitchen, your shed, or your lounge room, wherever you are right now, whichever continent, whichever country, whichever region, whichever state, thank you so much for having me as your guest. We are going to continue in a minute with continuation of last week’s show.

Malcolm Roberts:

We had two hours with the fabulous professor, Ian Plimer. He is back, as I promised, and we’re going to try and finish it. There’s so much material to cover. We may not get through it all, but we’re going to have some fun doing it. I’m just going to remind everyone that there are two themes to my show. Firstly, freedom, specifically freedom versus control, the age old human battle. And secondly, personal responsibility and integrity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this man, Ian Plimer, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer shows both, and he’s been a passionate defender and protector of freedom and shows personal responsibility and integrity. He’s a marvellous guest. Both freedom and personal responsibility are fundamental for human progress and people’s livelihoods. Before welcoming Ian back, let’s just recap some of the things that happened this week. First of all, the Great Barrier Reef. I’m going to ask again about this.

Malcolm Roberts:

We see now that the Australian Institute of Marine Science is telling us that, sorry, the Central Barrier Reef and the Northern Barrier Reef have got record levels of coral cover, record levels of coral cover. And he won’t be surprised, I am not surprised. And the Southern Barrier Reef, the Southern Region, there are three regions, the third doesn’t have record, but it has very high coral cover. The only reason it’s not record is because there’s a cyclical crown of thorns, starfish infestation. These come and go. We’ve known that for a long time.

Malcolm Roberts:

The other thing I would mention is that despite all the raving on about bleaching for the last few years rather, bleaching is entirely natural event response to, sorry, low cold temperatures and high warm temperatures, entirely natural. And people who understand barrier reefs understand that perfectly. And I remind people that Queensland had record cold temperatures, not in 1888, not in 1988, in 2008. And in that record, cold temperatures in 2008, the Southern Barrier Reef bleached in places. It’s a natural response.

Malcolm Roberts:

And then we have the lunatics in Canberra, and I’m part of that bloody zoo. We’re doing our best to try and turn the zoo around, but they passed in the lower house. It’s got to come to the Senate now, the labor’s climate change bill. Or should I say, the labour Greens coalition’s climate change bill, along with the tills. What a disgrace that is. Currently, unreliables, that’s wind and solar, are at 9% and 9% each. Both wind is 9% and solar at 9%. That’s 2020 and 2021.

Malcolm Roberts:

Labour wants to shoot that target up to 43% and unreliable’s solar and wind will make up 43%, more than doubling our solar and wind. Electricity prices have already trebled in the last three decades. We’ve gone from having the lowest electricity prices in the world to among the highest. Why? Because of wind and solar. The noted economist, Dr. Alan Moran, tells us in a especially commissioned report and he gets these figures, by the way, from government reports, government budget statements, state and federal. They can’t be argued.

Malcolm Roberts:

You cannot put a sensible argument to refute his figures. The levelized prices per megawatt hour of electricity hydrate is the cheapest. But the capacity in this country is very limited because we’re wasting the water up north. Let’s get onto the viable alternatives. Coal, $50 per megawatt hour. Gas, currently because of high gas prices, it’s around $80 to $100 per megawatt hour. It has been usually around $60 per megawatt hour. Nuclear, $70 to $80 per megawatt hour.

Malcolm Roberts:

And by the way, the coal prices are legit because there was recently another coal fired power station built in Vietnam to burn our coal. Wind, $100 per megawatt hour. Solar, $120 per megawatt hour firm. And of course, they need the batteries for wind and solar, and the batteries are impossible. Coal is half the price of wind and about 45% of the price of solar. That’s why our electricity prices skyrocketed. Now, what Ian Plimer and I are going to be discussing is my letter to the four amigos. That’s what I call them.

Malcolm Roberts:

The former prime minister, when he was prime minister, my letter was sent to Scott Morrison on the 27th of October 2021. It was sent at the same time and address to Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister, head of the national party at the time. And also too, at the same time, the one letter went to these four people, went to Anthony Albanese, the then leader of the opposition and now the prime minister. And the fourth of the four amigos was Adam Bandt, the leader of the Greens. The letter can be found at the website, my website, malcolmrobertsqld.com.au, M-A-L-C-O-L-M-R-O-B-E-R-T-S-Q-L-D.com.au. And we’ll be discussing that letter. Ian has a copy of it. It’s not kept secret, but we’ll be going through that. Welcome, Ian.

Ian Plimer:

Good day to you. How are you?

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m very well, thanks, mate. How are you?

Ian Plimer:

Oh, struggling through life with the greatest of ease.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can you struggle with ease? Well, tell me something you-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, that was a pretty good [inaudible 00:06:18] about the week.

Malcolm Roberts:

The zoo, the zoo, the excellent zoo. All this is fabricated.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So-

Malcolm Roberts:

All this climate hysteria.

Ian Plimer:

What a week it’s been. We have known from tourist operators for a long, long time, but the Great Barrier Reef was not in trouble. And they were using one of the fundamental criteria of science, and that is to observe. And they observe time and time and time again, that the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t in trouble. And finally, we get the Australian Institute of Marine Science tells us, it’s not in trouble. It’s, in fact, at best that’s been for a long, long. Now, how dare they? Now, if you’re employed in the climate industry, how dare someone say the planet’s okay?

Ian Plimer:

Because what that really means is you put people out of work. These people who are bludging grants from the government, these people who are imminently unemployable, working in these organisations that are trying to scare us and then in return, we give them money. They are now showing that it’s a total waste of oxygen and a total waste of money to keep these people alive. The Australian Institute of Marine Science has told us what we already knew, that coral reefs come, coral reefs go. There are many, many reasons.

Ian Plimer:

But the two major reasons I had been promoting, and that is runoff from agriculture and climate change just don’t affect coral ridge. And every time it warms up a little bit, a coral reef, you can hear it. You can hear it cheer because coral loves warmer water. The corals saying the Red Sea or Papua New Guinea growing much, much warmer water than the Great Barrier Reef. Coral likes it warm. Right from day one, you could not argue that warmer waters will kill off a coral reef. Now, blind Freddy knows that.

Ian Plimer:

But we have to wait till some official organisation can put their stamp of approval on it. For years, we’ve had to put up with the hypocrisy and moaning of these people. Thank God we’ve actually had a report that demonstrates that they’re tightly is this. They should go home.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, mate, can you … I normally start the show with something my guest appreciates. For something you appreciate, what is it? Anything at all? Maybe you appreciate the barrier reef, the truth being told.

Ian Plimer:

I appreciate living in a country with fresh air, with no pollution, with fresh water, something that so many countries where I work, such as in South America, Africa, Middle East, that they have got. We can actually breathe the air. Now we had the Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, a week or two ago in a national press club announcement, tell us how dreadful the pollution was in Australia. And then she finished with a tee-wee little emotional statement about how she loves to fly into Australia and see all the forests surrounding the city of Sydney, that crystal clear sparkling water and how she can see for miles.

Ian Plimer:

What she’s saying is that it’s absolutely beautiful, there is no pollution. If you want pollution, go to China, go to parts of India, go to parts of Africa. But you don’t see it in Western countries. Why? Because we have generated enough wealth to be able to clean up our act. If you want to stop pollution, get wealthy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, I’ve got to just adjust my microphone here because I’m coming across too loudly. We’ll see if that makes any difference. But thank you very much, Ian.

Ian Plimer:

All of the political issues, you have to come across loudly.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ve been trying it. Now speaking of politics, the key issue in this whole climate scam is shoddy governance. And the key issue there is the lack of integrity. And that’s what we’re focus on. Now listeners who listened to Ian and myself last two weeks ago know that we devoted the two hours to exposing the fact that there has been no one anywhere that has in politics that has provided the logical scientific points. By logical scientific points, what I mean is empirical scientific evidence, hard data, hard observations within a causal structure, a framework that proves cause and effect. No one anywhere. Not only that-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, Malcolm, that’s so many words. That’s so many words. It’s really simple. No one has ever shown too many emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Those emissions are 3% of total emission. If you did show that human emissions drive global warming, then you’d have to show that 97% of natural emissions don’t drive global warming. It’s checkmate.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, exactly. Now what we then started on was the cross examination that I have done of the CSIRO, the Australian Federal Government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. They’ve been given the responsibility for the last 48 years, almost half a century, to come up with the evidence. Now, these people in the CSIRO … By the way, CSIRO has a fabulous reputation over many, many years for some marvellous inventions, made life easier for people around the world. However, in the climate area, they are absolutely disgraceful.

Malcolm Roberts:

I refuse to call them scientists because they’re basically academics who are activists. Anyway, I’m the only person anywhere in the world, I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying it to highlight a point in a minute, I am the only politician anywhere in the world, an elected representative in congresses, in parliaments to have held a government science agency accountable. And we’re going to go through that right now. Two weeks ago that we pointed out that the first thing I did when I entered the Senate, as an elected representative of the people on 2016, was to send a letter.

Malcolm Roberts:

As soon as I got sworn in, I sent a letter to the head of the CSIRO, Dr. Larry Marshall, the chief executive, requesting a presentation. Now they ducked and dodged and bobbed and weaved and tried desperately to get out of it. But we eventually pinned them down with the help of two government ministers and senators. What we found, the first question I asked was, I want a presentation on the empirical scientific evidence, the hard data that shows that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger to humans.

Malcolm Roberts:

During the two-and-a-half presentation, when we eventually nailed them down … And by the way, they could bring any evidence they wanted, anything. They gave us one paper on carbon dioxide and one paper on temperatures. After more than 40 years of research, one paper on temperatures, which was published in 2013, and we dismissed that paper, completely tore it apart. Not only that we quoted the lead author of that paper himself saying, you can’t rely on the temperature construction that they made for the 20th century.

Malcolm Roberts:

I mean, the own author was dismissed within two weeks of that paper’s released in 2013. But in the course of that cross examination, CSIRO admitted that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger, never. We asked them, “Who has? Why do the politicians are saying that they rely on CSIRO?” And they said, “We better go and ask politicians.” Then I mentioned that we asked the chief scientists, the federal government’s chief scientist. And I think we got onto this, Ian, from memory, who at the time was-

Ian Plimer:

Yes, we did.

Malcolm Roberts:

… Dr. Alan Finkel. And we asked for a presentation from him. We opened the presentation in a little room in the science minister’s, Arthur Sinodinos’ office. And Dr. Alan Finkel started rabbiting on for about 20 minutes. And after 20 minutes, we’d had enough. And we just asked one simple question, I can’t remember what that question was. And he looked at us, he was stunned. He was suddenly realising that he couldn’t feed us crap. And he suddenly realised that we knew what the hell we were talking about.

Malcolm Roberts:

And he looked at me, and I will always remember these words, Ian. He said to me, “I am not a climate scientist and I don’t understand climate science.” And yet that man, funded with taxpayer money, was spreading the word around the countryside, advocating cuts in carbon dioxide from human activity. Ian, what do you say to that?

Ian Plimer:

Well, Malcolm, there’s couple of things here. There’s a couple of things here. You don’t have to be a climate scientist, whatever that is, to be able to see that this is total [inaudible 00:15:07].

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Ian Plimer:

All you have to do is to adhere to the scientific method. And science is married to evidence. That evidence must be reproducible, it must be validated. It must be in an accord with everything else that’s been demonstrated. Now, in science, we have a body of evidence from which we construct a theory, and that’s just a way to try to understand things. And if the theory doesn’t work, you throw out the theory. What the climate activists are wanting us to do is to say, this is a theory. We, humans, drive global warming and we’ll juggle the evidence to fit it.

Ian Plimer:

Any evidence that doesn’t agree with the theory, such as my science, geology, then you just throw that out. It’s the exact inverse of how science works. And they are corrupting the scientific process. These people are not climate scientists. They are activists who are chasing your money, chasing power, chasing fortune. Yet they don’t chase an electorate as you have to do. It is not science. And it’s something that I get thrown at me quite often, because I’m an earth scientist. I’m not a climate scientist.

Ian Plimer:

These people do not realise that we have 200 years of geology textbooks where half the space of the book is arguing about climate. We, geologists, were onto climate change 200 years ago. This was from people working in the Paris basin, seeing that there was tropical flora and fauna in the Paris basin where it isn’t tropical. People in England realised from fossils that we had to have had much warmer climate. And Charles Lyell in 1833, pursue this even further. He very nearly got onto the idea of continental drift.

Ian Plimer:

We, geologists, have been struggling for centuries about how you can have tropical flora and fauna in fossils in high latitude European countries, that with climate change. The textbooks are full of it. And all of a sudden, when there’s money to be made and when people want to frighten us with this, we get a group of atmospheric mathematicians and physicists who argue that it is only a traces of a trace gas in an atmosphere that drive a whole planetary process.

Ian Plimer:

They don’t seem to realise that in the past, we’ve had huge processes where the atmosphere, the oceans, the rock and life have worked hand in hand. And that’s happened a number of times in the past. To be what is called a climate scientist, you have to basically ignore all the evidence from other sciences, ignore the scientific method, and promote your alleged science on the basis of feelings and beliefs rather than evidence.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said. And we’re going to go to an ad break now. But when we come back, I’m going to tell you what the chief scientist did on the second presentation that we arranged. We’ll be right back for more from Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this is Senator Malcolm Roberts, broadcasting from Australia with Professor Ian Plimer. And Ian, we arranged at that first presentation from the chief scientist. We said to them, this is not good enough, we want a proper presentation, and we want that to be at least four hours in length and a proper discussion. And he responded to me and he and the science minister, both agreed, we set a date for a couple of months’ time. And then as we wound up, he said to me, “Can I bring a scientist?” And I said, “You can bring anyone you like.”

Malcolm Roberts:

Ian, the second presentation, just before it was due to be held, was cancelled because Dr. Alan Finkel was overseas. Now he since come back. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. We suddenly had the CSIRO arranged to give a second presentation to us. And at this presentation, we said, “You failed the first one, so let’s have a simpler task for you. We want evidence, empirical scientific evidence of anything unprecedented in climate in the past 10,000 years and due to human carbon dioxide.”

Malcolm Roberts:

And in the course of that, they presented another paper, which we ripped apart as well and had no evidence. But in the course of that presentation, Ian, over two-and-a-half hours again, from the CSiRO’s climate science team, they looked at me and admitted, “Today’s temperatures are not unprecedented, not unprecedented.” Yet the whole climate scam started on claims of unprecedented, unusual, catastrophic, disastrous global warming. Are we warm at all, Ian?

Ian Plimer:

Well, we hear that porn word, unprecedented. There are a couple of things unprecedented in the history of our planet. The first time it rained, the first time we had life on earth, the first time we had a climate change. They were unprecedented. They didn’t happen before. They only happened once. And after that, everything is a reflection of climate cycles, which seem to get ignored. We have cycles of climate related to the pulling apart of the continent and the stitching back together every 400 million years.

Ian Plimer:

Cycles of climate related to having a bad galactic address every 143 million years, cycles of climate based on orbital cycles of the earth, which get us closer or further from the sun, cycles of climate derived with changes in the sun. And these changes are based on sun spots, but they’re also based on long cycles, 1500 years and 10,000 years. These cycles are well documented and they then affect ocean cycles, which turn out to be about every 60 years. And we also have lunar tidal cycles, pushing warmer water into the Arctic.

Ian Plimer:

And every time that happens, the Northwest Passage is open. Every time we don’t have that warmer water pushed into the Arctic, it’s closed. We’ve known this for a long time. The Chinese have known it for thousands of years because they once had a calendar based on the 60-year ocean cycles, which was related to the productivity of their crops. We never hear that we have cycles of climate and we never hear that in the past, we had very carbon dioxide rich atmospheres. This atmosphere had cyclical changes.

Ian Plimer:

And in today’s atmosphere, we have traces of carbon dioxide and humans are adding traces and traces to that atmosphere. And all of a sudden, we have to forget all the previous cycles and being that traces of a trace gas are driving all of climate change. To forget all of past science and to try to blame humans on driving a massive planetary system is just bonkers. Yet this is what we get told. Now, the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, they do not talk about cycles. They talk about carbon dioxide as if this trace gas drives the whole climate. They are demonstrably wrong.

Ian Plimer:

And I don’t have opinions in my science, I have facts. I don’t let emotions get in the way of my science. Well, yes, I do. I tell a lie, I get excited. And what excites me in my science is not what I know, but what I don’t know. What excites me is when I see something and I find out something and I think, well, that’s interesting. I’m curious about that. And it’s curiosity that drives science. It’s evidence that drives science. It’s not politics. You’ve only got to look at what Lysenko did to agricultural science in the Soviet Union, ending up in 30 million people dying because the science was wrong.

Ian Plimer:

Now we are in a similar situation where the science on climate change is demonstrably wrong. It is sending countries bankrupt. It is killing people. It’s not warm weather that kills people, it’s Jack Frost that kills people. The science is to demonstrably wrong. Governments are able to skin people alive in Western countries because they’re wealthy. And when these Western countries have ultimately fritted away, large amounts of money and have ended up economically like Argentina. Some clown is going to ask the question, how did this happen?

Ian Plimer:

We’re once wealthy, we once had reliable electricity and cheap electricity. What has happened? I mean, that’s when questions like the ones you are asking in the Senate and programmes like this become important. No one has ever pursued scientific organisations in parliament on those fundamental question. You’re the only person that’s done it, and more power to you. Keep doing it.

Malcolm Roberts:

We will. We will, Ian. We’re going to bust this rubbish. Now you raised-

Ian Plimer:

Well, I’m happy to talk with you in the trenches.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m going to ask you something about that. Maybe on air, but maybe after, it depends. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Can you explain-

Ian Plimer:

Well, it’s better if everyone can hold be accountable. I don’t mind being accountable.

Malcolm Roberts:

No, no. I mean, I’m lining up to a range of presentation, an offer of a presentation from the best scientists in the world to some of the tills and some of the other climate alarmists. And I was wondering if you’d be available for that.

Ian Plimer:

I’m certainly available for it, but it’ll takes [inaudible 00:27:52] to quiet me down. But I’m more than willing to use evidence to charge and persuade people that opinion and feelings don’t count. It is evidence and it has to be reproduced. It has to be valid.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And the whole thrust of the programme two weeks ago for the two hours and these two hours is to do one thing, to put the onus onto the politicians who want to cut a human activity producing carbon dioxide and taxes all into oblivion, put the owners on them because they have never held onus.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah. If you come up with an extraordinary idea, you need extraordinary evidence to support it. That hasn’t been done.

Malcolm Roberts:

Correct. Tell everyone what a trace gas is because it’s a scientific term, trace gas.

Ian Plimer:

We once had an atmosphere with a very large amount of carbon dioxide. Our first atmosphere on planet earth had ammonia, methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and helium. That didn’t last long. And we got into our second atmosphere, which had nitrogen and a huge amount of carbon dioxide, maybe 20% carbon dioxide. Our third atmosphere-

Malcolm Roberts:

Roughly, when did that change occur? I mean-

Ian Plimer:

On a Tuesday and-

Malcolm Roberts:

Resident mother earth.

Ian Plimer:

Now, that was in the geological period called the Proterozoic from about 2.5 billion years ago to about 500 million years ago.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right, thank you.

Ian Plimer:

We had huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we’ve sequestered that into the limey rocks. And the third atmosphere, which we currently enjoy, is nitrogen and oxygen dominant atmosphere. That oxygen comes from life. That oxygen comes from life consuming carbon dioxide, using the carbon and excreting the oxygen. And so, we have gone from an atmosphere that had 20% carbon dioxide in it to 1.04%. And we are worried about a slight increase in carbon dioxide. Now, during that time, we have had six great ice ages.

Ian Plimer:

Each one of those ice ages started when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. You can’t try to tell me that the traces of small amounts of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere, which has only got 0.04% carbon dioxide in it, can drive global warming. Because it didn’t happen in the past. The physics and chemistry of the way the planet works hasn’t changed because you are alive. It is a trace gas in the atmosphere. It is plant food. It has very slightly increased over the last 50 years. Now we actually don’t quite know why. Because we know from ice cold drilling that once you get a temperature increase, then anything from 600 to 6,000 years later, you get a carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere. We’ve had-

Malcolm Roberts:

So hang on there. That means the temperature drives the carbon dioxide, not the carbon dioxide driving the temperature.

Ian Plimer:

Yes. And we’ve only known that for 200 years in chemistry. But if you don’t know any chemistry, then, of course, that doesn’t fit your policy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Henry’s Law, right?

Ian Plimer:

Henry’s Law. And so, what we can see in the past is that once we have cold periods of time, then we get natural warming, later carbon dioxide increase. Now our last cold period finished in the minimum, just over 300 years ago. We’ve been increasing in temperature for that last 300 years. So that increase in carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere might not be due to humans emitting carbon dioxide from industry. It might be due to natural exhalation of carbon dioxide with the warming of the oceans.

Ian Plimer:

The jury is out because the methods which are used to try to tell us the proportion of human carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are dodgy at best. And I go in my latest book, Green Murder, I go into some of those calculation. And I’m arguing that it could have even be only 1% of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions every year from humans, not the 3% which we commonly get told. There’s a whole lot of uncertainty in this science. But when we have an atmosphere that was once 20% carbon dioxide and life thrived, we had glaciations, we had climate change.

Ian Plimer:

And now we’ve got an atmosphere of 0.04% carbon dioxide. We’re having connections about a couple of parts per million increase of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. Now we can see the effects of that because we’ve been measuring our planet from satellites since 1979. And we’ve seen that in the last 40 years or so, we’ve had a slight greening of the planet. That’s due to a very slight increase in carbon dioxide and maybe 10 or 20 parts per million carbon dioxide increase. That slight greening has done the planet good.

Ian Plimer:

The second thing is we’ve seen an increase in crop yield, partly due to increase carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, partly due to genetically modified crops, and partly due to better fertilisers. If we go the other path, you just go down the path of Sri Lanka. Carbon dioxide is good for you. It is plant food. If we didn’t have plants, we’d be dead. If we have the atmospheric carbon dioxide content kiss some part of your body and say goodbye, you’re going to be dead.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said. We could talk for hours, and maybe we’d come back to carbon dioxide at the end of the show. But the trace gas carbon dioxide, as you pointed out, is 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere right now. And the proportion could … Well, that’s basically 4/100ths of 1%. It’s trivial. It’s minuscule. And that’s why it’s called a trace gas. And it’s not Professor Plimer or myself is calling it a trace gas. It’s a scientific category. It’s a trace gas. You also mentioned … Well, let’s go to sticking with the second CSIRO presentation.

Malcolm Roberts:

The first one, they presented after 48 years of research, they presented one paper and temperatures, which we showed was complete crap, complete crap. They presented one paper by Harris. And that first paper on temperatures was by Mark Adam. I’m putting these on the record, 2013. And the second paper was Harris et al that was on carbon dioxide, and that was shown to be completely faulty, completely faulty. The covert spoke about those two papers again.

Malcolm Roberts:

And at the second presentation, they gave us Lecavalier 2017 on temperatures and Feldman on 2015 on carbon dioxide. Again, faulty and proven to be faulty by pre-reviewed scientific papers that we presented to the CSIRO. At their third presentation, they presented five vague references. None of which specified any location where there’s proof that human carbon dioxide is affecting the climate, nothing at all, nothing scientific, nothing specified. And some of the references in the last five they gave us contradicted the earlier references.

Malcolm Roberts:

I mean, Ian, you can’t make this stuff up. They provided us with no evidence at all and then contradicted themselves and showed an abysmal understanding of science. Is that typical of the CSIRO? It doesn’t seem to be, but they’ve gone rogue.

Ian Plimer:

Well, in that particular case, they were treating you with disdain. Feed this man a bit of bullshit and he won’t understand it. He would go away. Now, that’s not the way it works. The CSIRO has been a great organisation, creating new strains of wheat that can survive our lower rainfall and high solidity soils in Australia. They’ve done some wonderful work. They’ve done some wonderful work with mineral exploration, but many of these divisions of the CSIRO now have been reduced or closed. CSIRO now has a sociologist in each division.

Ian Plimer:

And these people are there to help promote the social benefits of what the CSIRO do. And they were fobbing you off. They actually made a fundamental strategic error of warfare. They underestimated how strong and how good you work. And they said, oh, we’ll just give this clown a few papers full of gobbledygook and he’ll go away. Well, firstly, he’s like a rabid dog. He won’t go away. And the second thing is, you understand the science, you’ve got a background in engineering, you’ve practised engineering. You’ve actually seen the practical side of doing things. And that contempt that they had for you, you have exposed. And you’ve got to keep doing it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes, and we will. And I’ll just point out something. While I’m an engineer by training and qualification, I have other statutory qualifications that also depend upon my understanding of atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide. I’ve had to keep people alive, underground in minds, based upon my knowledge of atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide. I’ve had to do that. I’ve held accountable under the most rigorous scrutiny of possible. But the work that we did holding the CSIRO accountable involved a wonderful man who’s highly objective.

Malcolm Roberts:

I won’t give you his name out at the moment. He has an order of Australia medal for his services to research in this country. And he is not only a phenomenal brain and one of the highest intellects that I’ve ever experienced, he has a complete objectivity, no emotion, whatsoever, attached to his statements. He just says it like it is and he holds people accountable. He is also a genius in statistics, a genius in computing. He wrote programmes to legally go into scientific bodies around the world and scrape off 24,000 datasets.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what CSIRO was up against, this man with 24,000 datasets on both climate and on energy. And that’s how we smashed them. But the key thing we were doing, Ian, was putting the onus on them. They failed the first time. They failed the second time to provide any evidence that we need to cut anything at all in our output. Let’s move on to Senate estimates. Sorry, they-

Ian Plimer:

Just come back-

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes.

Ian Plimer:

Just come back to that. We are having people create policy and make statements, such that pensioners say in the UK, need to make a choice that whether they eat, have a hot shower or heat a room. These policies are-

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s happening in Australia, Ian. That’s happening in Australia.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah. These policies are killing people. Now, while you were an engineer working underground, and I go underground very regular now, we measure gases. We measure carbon monoxide. We measure carbon dioxide. We measure methane. We measure sulphur dioxide. We measure nitrogen oxides. We measure oxygen. And if you, as an engineer, underground and someone dies with a methane gas dust explosion or someone asphyxiates from carbon monoxide, it’s not only that you are responsible in the state where you worked as a mining engineer, you are criminally responsible.

Ian Plimer:

You go to a trial where there is no jury and where there’s no mechanism of appealing. You go to jail with a very hefty fine. That is the industrial law that you worked under as a mining engineer underground. We have no such industrial laws for those people who might set up a wind turbine that send people absolutely bonkers with the ultrasound that they have to suffer. We have no industrial law to make people responsible for killing people because they haven’t got enough energy to stay warm. I think that point of the consequences of your action and responsibility is an extremely important one. And this is why I called my latest book Green Murder, because these green policies knowingly kill people and there is no responsibility for that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Hear, hear. Well, we’ll go to another ad break and we’ll be right back for more with Professor Ian Plimer. And we’ll continue putting the onus on these people who are destroying humanity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this is Senator Malcolm Roberts, coming to you from Australia, wherever you are in the world right now, with my special guest, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer. Ian, we then had a third presentation from the CSIRO that they requested, because they were so embarrassed with what we’d done to their so-called science, their third presentation. And that’s-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, you [inaudible 00:43:12] for punishment.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And then we had Senate estimates hearings. I was knocked out due to dual citizenship and came back in 2019. And I held these people accountable in Senate estimates. And I asked them for a really … They failed to provide anything that was any evidence of danger. They admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. They failed to provide any evidence, whatsoever, that we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. I asked them a really simple question. “Okay, okay.

Malcolm Roberts:

All I want from you in Senate estimates is the empirical scientific evidence, the hard data showing that there has been a statistically significant change in climate, anything, temperatures, snowfall, rainfall, drought length, severity, frequency, a flood, lengths of frequency, severity, tides. Anything at all, away you go.” And they said, “We’ve already done it,” which was a fundamental lie, which is a fundamental misrepresentation by the CSIRO’s director, one of his directors, Dr. Peter Mayfield.

Malcolm Roberts:

They have never shown us even that there’s statistically significant change in climate. In other words, Ian, there is no change of process, there is no change of climate, just as you pointed out at the very start of your contribution today, natural cycles interacting.

Ian Plimer:

Well, yes, you can’t show that human emissions drive global warming. Because you have to show that the oceanic emissions don’t. It’s checkmate. It can’t be done, and it hasn’t been done. And the arguments always fall apart with what you are doing. Really simple questions. And I think for any listeners that want to battle their local green activist, don’t argue with them. Don’t present them with facts. Ask them really simple questions. Put the owners on them to say, oh, well, that’s an interest concept. Where can I find the evidence? And wave your mobile phone around.

Ian Plimer:

And you can say, look, for the 30-second search on this phone, I can show you that the hurricane intensity hasn’t been increasing. With the 30-second search from this phone, you can see that the Great Barrier Reef isn’t being destroyed. With the 30-second search on this phone, you can actually see that sea levels are not rising catastrophically, that land levels go up and down as well as sea levels go up and down. The information is out there. Your choice is to whether you want to actually look at information.

Ian Plimer:

And for me, the most exciting thing is to put together all of the information. Some of which might grade a little bit, but put it all together to try to get an understanding. And that understanding is a model. Models are not evidence. Models are a really, really naive way of trying to understand how the world works. However, it is models that are driving the scare campaign. It is models that are telling us that in 50 or 100 years’ time, we’re going to fry and die. Yet those people promoting those models are going to be dead anyway. What value is that? There is no responsibility.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, speaking of responsibility, I take responsibility for the executive summary of the report that I wrote along with my Senate office team and our colleague with the Order of Australian medal. We published this in a report entitled, Restoring Scientific Integrity. And I’m going to read out the executive summary. And then what I’d like you to do, Ian, is to give me a comment on the 10 … Overall comment, whatever you want to say. This is the executive summary. The CSIRO has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is dangerous.

Malcolm Roberts:

Secondly, they admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. They withdrew, effectively withdrew by not discussing anything after we discredited the papers that they had provided as evidence of unprecedented rate of temperature change, and then failed to provide supporting empirical evidence. The CSIRO has never quantified any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity. That’s the fundamental basis for policy. Fifth, they rely on unvalidated models, as Ian just said, that give unverified and erroneous projections as so-called evidence.

Malcolm Roberts:

They relied on discredited and poor quality papers on temperature and carbon dioxide. They admit, they admit to not doing due diligence on reports and data from external agencies that they use. They revealed little understanding of papers they cited as evidence. They showed us papers, in fact, later that contradicted their earlier papers. These people have no clue. Second last, they allow politicians and journalists to misrepresent CSIRO’s science without correcting the journalists and the politicians. And last, they misled parliament. What a dog’s breakfast, Ian?

Ian Plimer:

Well, it is. And we have some problems here that this is a bandwagon, this is a fad. This is a fashion. This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with controlling you taking money out of your wallet and being unelected and controlling the way in which this world operates. For me, the important aspects are the lack of due diligence. Now, I spend a lot of my life doing due diligence on various projects. If I get it wrong, I actually lose my job. If I get it wrong in a public organisation, a public company, I can go to jail.

Ian Plimer:

But that doesn’t happen with these scientific organisations. And our journalists, I mean, I don’t think we have many journalists left on planet Earth. We have now people who have chosen to be activists and claim that they are journalists and are in the mainstream media trying to change people’s opinions. And most of that attempt is done by omitting information rather than providing information. The good old fashioned crusty journalist who started life as a 16-year-old cadet in the newsroom has ended up writing balanced stories. Those people don’t exist.

Ian Plimer:

There are a few newspapers around the world and a few media networks where you can get this balance. This is why I think a lot of people now are not buying newspapers, they’re not looking at commercial television. They are getting their information from other source because they have realised that the art of journalism has almost died. And journalists now are trying to use a very, very limited dumbed down education to actually push their own political barrier. This is tragic. And we see them also trying to influence politicians, most of whom cannot answer simple scientific questions that when I was 12 years old, I could have answered.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay, Ian, one fundamental point. We’ve got about five minutes before the top of the hour and we go into our news. And we’ll be back after that, everyone, by the way, with Ian Plimer. One really fundamental question for politicians, scientists, and voters. The CSIRO has never presented any robust scientific evidence underpinning their policy, the government’s policy, labour and liberal. The proper basis for policy, and this is what I’d like you to comment on, please, the proper basis for policy, as I understand it, is a specific quantified impact of human carbon dioxide on any temperature factor, whether it’s temperature, rainfall, drought, snow, ocean, alkalinity, anything at all.

Malcolm Roberts:

You have got to show that for a certain unit of carbon dioxide from human activity, this is the consequence in temperature or rainfall or whatever. That’s the first thing. That is fundamental to policy. Because you cannot assess any cost benefit analysis by saying, if we put in place a mechanism for minimising that impact, what it will cost compared with the cost of doing nothing. That’s fundamental. And the third point about this is that if you haven’t got that specific quantified effect from human carbon dioxide, you cannot track, cannot measure how you’re going with implementing your policy. This is fundamental, isn’t it?

Ian Plimer:

Well, very much is. Now our politics is not driven by building the nation. It’s a populist view derived from surveys to try to guarantee that a particular politician is going to get reelected. It’s got nothing to do with making the planet a better place. It’s got nothing to do with helping people in need, and it’s not based on any knowledge, any science, or any data. Policy is to get reelected. That is what drives political views. And this is why I’ve often argued that the best politician is a frightened politician. They have to face an election.

Ian Plimer:

I’ll give you example of a true journalist in this country, Alan Jones, who asked the Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, what the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide was. She couldn’t answer it. Now, that is a question that if you are going to get into discussions about climate, you should actually know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, which allegedly drives climate change. We had a minister for the environment couldn’t answer that really simple question. What hope have we got?

Ian Plimer:

These people, listeners, you have to make your politicians scared. You have to frighten them. You have to let them know that if you follow this policy, you will not be reelected. And this is the only reason we have politicians create certain policies. It’s got nothing to do with the environment. It’s got nothing to do with saving the planet. It is to get reelected.

Malcolm Roberts:

Hear, hear. And that leads to a very simple point before I continue with another list. The simple point is this, we will never have frightened politicians in this country whenever people blindly vote for labour, liberal, nationals, or greens. Just blindly vote. We have to scrutinise politicians. We have to scrutinise their words, their behaviour, their actions, their policies, and then vote for whoever is correct, whoever aligns with you, not just go with the title party.

Malcolm Roberts:

Here are some conclusions, Ian, that I’ve got from my restoring scientific integrity as a result of our cross examination of CSIRO. CSIRO’s evidence for unprecedented change was easily refuted, and a major breakdown of the peer review system was revealed in Marc or in Lecavalier. We’ll have to come to a summary of this after the break, your comments after the break. Oh, no, no. Let’s leave that till after the break. What I’d also like to mention, Ian, is that they rely on claims of consensus. Isn’t that an admission? Just briefly, isn’t that an admission that they don’t have the science? Whenever they claim a consensus, that’s an admission they don’t have the science. Because if they had it, they would’ve presented it to me.

Ian Plimer:

Oh, yes. Science is married to scepticism. Science is often conducted by lone wolves. Science is not conducted by committees. Consensus is a word of politics, it’s not a word of science.

Malcolm Roberts:

And with that, we’re going to the break. And we’ll be back straight after the break with the news, with Professor Ian Plimer, to continue exposing more of the government’s bullshit on climate.

Transcript part 2

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts, on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from Australia and I’m with Ian Plimer, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer. So Ian, I’ll read the conclusions from my study, Restoring Scientific Integrity, that summarises what CSIRO has failed to do.

                “First of all, CSIRO’s evidence for unprecedented change was easily refuted and a major breakdown of the peer-review system was revealed in both Marcott and Lecavalier papers. Secondly, CSIRO provided no quantified evidence that humans are responsible for any particular amount of change in any climate factor nor any climate variable, nothing. CSIRO would not attribute danger to carbon dioxide from human activity. And have not provided evidence to allow any politicians, including ministers, to attribute danger. CSIRO stated that the determination of danger was a matter for the public or for politicians.

                Australian climate policies have never been based on empirical evidence and logical scientific reasoning. After reviewing the peer-reviewed papers that CSIRO cited, it is inconceivable that government policy should be based on the unverified assumption that a peer-reviewed paper is accurate and contains the best available research. That’s particularly so when key data has been unscientifically fabricated, as was the case in the first paper and second paper that CSIRO presented on temperature. As Australia’s premier government-funded climate science agency, CSIRO’s gross deficiencies need to be investigated to establish reasons for CSIRO’s deterioration. The fact that CSIRO abrogated claims of danger to government ministers, reveals that it has been afraid to speak out about obviously politically driven deviations from science. That includes journalists driving deviations from science.”

                Ninth point. “Integrity and accountability need to be restored for both research and for presenting scientific conclusions, as well as for scrutinising political claims and policies supposedly based on science. Next, the CSIRO climate group’s pathetic and inadequate case does not justify spending tens of billions of dollars, nor does it justify the destruction of trillions. And I mean that word sincerely, trillions of dollars of wealth as a result of climate policies that hurt families, export Australian jobs and erode our national security.

                Our ability to defend and secure our borders. The onus. Lastly, the onus is now on the federal government to scrap climate policies, unless CSIRO can provide accurate, repeatable and verifiable empirical scientific evidence. Within a logical scientific framework that proves carbon dioxide from human activity detrimentally affects climate variability and needs to be cut. The proposed cuts need to be specified in terms of the amount, the impact and effects, together with the cost of making and not making the cuts.” What do you think, mate?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we get told that the science is settled. Now, if the science is settled, we say, “Thank you very much, we are now going to disband you. We’ll disband the climate division of the CSIRO. We’ll disband all the climate institutes at the universities. We’ll disband the climate group in the Bureau of Meteorology, but we sincerely thank you for all the work that you’ve done and demonstrating that the science is settled.” I think that’s the easiest way to solve the problem.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, let’s continue on with their claims of consensus and their claims of that they haven’t provided the science. So what we then see from the government is that they claim they rely upon 97% of scientists claiming that they have the science. Yet not one of them has produced the science. What I’ve done, Ian, as you know, is I’ve interviewed world leading scientists on my findings of the CSIRO. And they have all justified and endorsed my claims about CSIRO.

                I’ll go through a list of them. Professor John Christie, Climatologist, Mathematician, University of Alabama Analyst and presenter of Global Temperature Data from NASA satellites. The man who does that. Professor David Legates, climatologist and statistician. Dr. Craig Idso as climatologists. These are state climatologists in the United States. They have been appointed climatologists for their state.

                Dr. Nils Mörner world’s number one C-level expert. The late Dr. Nils Mörner. Professor Nir Shaviv, atmospheric physicist from Israel. Professor Will HHapper, physicist. Dr. Willie Soon, atmospheric physicist. Yourself, you’ve done this. Steve McIntyre, mathematician and statistician who tore apart Marcott within two weeks of its release in 2013. Bill Kinmont, a former senior bureau of meteorology official and meteorologist. Emeritus, Professor Garth Paltridge, former CSRIO senior researcher. Dr. Howard Brady, geologist, another one of your kin Ian, and an Antarctica researcher. Dr. John McLean, a climate scientist who did the first audit on the global historical climate network, temperature data.

                It had never been audited, never until John did that. And he found glaring problems with it. And that’s the temperature data that the UN relies upon. And the CSIRO rely upon. Tony Heller, geologist and engineer auditing NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies data. Susan Crockford, polar bear researcher. Professor Lou Milan, Brazil Bureau of Meteorology and Dr. David Evans, who had been working as a climate modeller, and then has realised that it’s all rubbish. I mean, do we need anyone else? They haven’t provided the evidence and we’ve got the scientist.

Professor Ian Plimer:

You used a very interesting word, audit. Now, all public and private companies are required by law to have an audit. Are the books wrong? Is someone tickling the till? Is the company operating while in solvent? Now an audit, a scientific audit should look at very similar things. Are the claims being made, supported by evidence? Are people over icing the cake in order to get their next research grant? Are the people making these claims qualified to make those claims? So if, for example, you in the minerals business make a claim that this mineral deposit is that big or this big, you have to have certain qualifications to make such statements. So the normal due diligence processes that we have operating any other business, besides government, has an audit. Yet these government businesses are dealing with trillions of dollars and no one audits them and says, “Wait a minute folks, we might have got the fundamentals wrong.”

                And this is why I urge you to continue this line about, show me the evidence that human emissions drive global warming. Because if there is no evidence, then the whole white shoe brigade industry of subsidised solar and wind coming off that, shouldn’t be there. Then the next great subsidy stage of having subsidised hydrogen from subsidised wind and solar, shouldn’t be there. And we find that the emperor has no clothes. This to me is by far the best approach, ask simple questions, don’t make statements, ask questions. And that’s what an auditor does. And with my various roles in life at present, I’m constantly dealing with auditors under US law, Canadian law, UK law, and Australian law.

                They ask questions and you have to satisfy the auditors with your answer. If not, you have broken the law and you can be fined or go to jail. And I can’t see why the laws should be any different from someone making an extraordinary scientific claim, which requires a taxpayer to spend trillions. We need an audit and we need audits every year as every company has to have. And I can’t see why we can’t have scientific audits all the time. Now, Professor Peter Wild, did a scientific audit of what the coral reef scientist were stating. And he showed that it was wrong. There was a lot to be desired. Those audits should happen every year. We taxpayers are putting billions every year into science research. Where are the audits?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. Now, I’m going to feed you a really a tender morsel Professor Plimer. We have had two natural real world experiments on these climate claims. In 2009, we had the global financial crisis. In 2009, the following year, we had a recession around the world, a very severe recession in most countries, Australia, wasn’t in recession. Thanks to our amazing exports of mineral products from this country. Every other country just about, was in a major recession, not a minor recession, a severe recession.

                When that happens, people use less hydrocarbon fuels, coal oil and natural gas, which meant that the production of carbon dioxide from human activity decreased. In 2009, there was less carbon dioxide produced from human activity than in 2008. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere continued increasing in 2020 we had COVID, almost a depression around the world. Again is very severe recession, most countries around the world. And when that happened, we again used less coal, oil and natural gas. And so the human output of carbon dioxide in 2020 was less than in 2019. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing because nature alone determines the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Isn’t this a perfectly natural real world experiment professor Plimer?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, what it does is it shows us that the common figure that’s thrown around of 3% of all emissions or of human origin might actually be wrong. It might actually be 1%. And I argue this in my book, Green Murder, I argue from volcanic emissions. I argue it used, 2007, 2008 and 2020 to the present COVID crisis, that we have got these natural experiments. And it may well be that human emissions have absolutely no effect whatsoever on global climate. And if it is, it’s probably close to the order of accuracy of measurement. And if it is abled to be measured, then the effect that Australia has in emitting 1.3% of the world’s annual admissions, which is 3% of the total planetary emissions. Is nine parts of one 11th of bugger all. So why are we having conniptions about a fractional amount of carbon dioxide emitted by humans?

                Why are we having conniptions when we cannot show that this has any effect on global climate. And shouldn’t we be spending our hard earned dollars on other things rather than spending billions every year on climate research. Trillions on putting in infrastructure that we know already will fail. So I think once you get a populist idea like this, it takes a long time to grind through the system before people realise it’s wrong.

                Populous politics, isn’t very sensible. And we see that ultimately this culotte mania, which we’re undergoing, leads to tears. We’ve seen it before, South seen [inaudible 00:12:41] Dutch culotte mania, and we’re right on that path again. And there’s something rather fundamental about our opposition, our position won’t argue data. As soon as we raise a point, they attack us with hatred and with venom. And why do they do that? They do that, I think for two reasons, the first is that they’ve been beneficiaries that have dumbed to down scientific education whereby they haven’t got any science. And they can’t argue because they haven’t been taught critical thinking. So the only response they’ve got is to be angry. And the second thing is, there’s no evidence. So we are seeing all these clues that we are being fed, probably the greatest policy damaging process for a very long period of time. The one before that was communism.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here, and just think about this too, everyone at home. Hard earned dollars is what professor Ian Plimer just mentioned. Our hard earned dollars. If we cannot by cutting our carbon dioxide production, human production of carbon dioxide, severely as in two major recessions in the last 14 years. If that had no impact on reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, why the hell do they want to steal our land, raise at taxes, impose gut wrenching regulations on us. That’s what we have to ask. The natural experiment in 2009 and 2020 showed that our massive cutting of carbon dioxide from human activity had no impact whatsoever. Neither will taxes. Neither will regulations. Neither will continue to steal. Neither will the continued stealing of farmers’ land.

                Let’s move on. This was this climate sham was first raised by a liberal politician, Baume, in federal parliament in 1975, he was the first one to raise the possibility that human or the claim that human activity, carbon dioxide from human activity affects our climate. The first prime minister to raise it was Bob Hawk. He raised it sometime after 1983. And he first raised it himself as an MP in 1980. And then we had John Howard go on the bandwagon. And what they quite often claim is that it based upon UN intergovernmental panel on climate change results. Ian, I’ve analysed the UN reports.

                1990 was the first, 1995 was the second one, 2001 was the third one, 2007 was the fourth one, 2013 was the fifth one, 2000 and… Just recently 2020 was the sixth one, sorry, 2022 was the sixth one. In each of those papers. They have one single core chapter that is supposedly showing that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. In 2001, it was chapter 12. In 2007, it was chapter nine. In 2013, it was chapter 10. In those so chapters and in the latest one, the same applies. There has never been any evidence presented that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. But instead, what we have is a summary for policy makers. That’s dumbed down for politicians and journalists that is full of crap. It has no evidence whatsoever in it. What about the UN IPCC, Ian?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, the UN IPCC is not a scientific organisation. It is a political organisation. It’s brief is to show that human emissions drive global warming. That brief comes out in a report, which has two parts to it. One is a summary at the beginning, and that’s the journalists and politicians, most of whom are ill educated. And it’s written in a very alarmist language. And that summary is normally totally unrelated to the scientific text, which in the latest one was just short of 4000 pages. And that is again, baffling people with bullshit. And there’s just so much information there that it’s very hard for the average person to work out what’s going on. So they have to actually trust it. Now I don’t, because there is a huge amount of information out there that has the contrary view. The book that I put out 10 years ago, Heaven and Earth. I had three and a half years-

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, marvellous. Marvellous book.

Professor Ian Plimer:

… of scientific papers, which show that human emissions don’t drive global warming. And the latest book, I’ve only got 1700 scientific papers that show that humanly emissions don’t drive global warming. Those papers are not listed in the IPCC reports. Those IPCC reports omit any contrary information whatsoever. And so it is very much a partisan view, fulfilling the requirements of their brief. And that is to show we’re all going to fry and die. And it’s very much the view of an anonymous group of rather shady people who love their joints and conferences and write a few words every few years. And for that, there’s fame and fortune and there’s power. And there’s these faceless people who are creating a power structure whereby we pay.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here, we’ll go to an ad break now, and then we’ll come back and we’ll listen to more from Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts. Welcome back. And I’ve got my special guest, Ian Plimer. Before I move on with Ian, this is TNT radio. Where the only thing we mandate is the truth and you’ll get the truth from professor Ian Plimer. Ian, we have a fabulous researcher in Australia, an IT specialist, also a climate scientist with peer-reviewed papers published. And he pointed out that in an analysis of the UN IPCCs own data, only five reviewers endorsed the claim that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and it needs to be cut. Only five and there’s doubt they are even scientists. Yet we are told there are thousands of scientists what’s going on?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we’re not told the truth. And I know who you’re referring to. That was a magnificent piece of work he did for his PhD. We’re not told the truth. Many of these reports are written by activists. Many of them are written by green peace officials. Few of them are written by scientists and very, very few indeed are written by eminent scientists. So this is propaganda at best, at worst it may well be indeed are written by eminent scientist. So this is propaganda at best, at worst it’s may well be part of a great reset. So you used the word truth. Now you are regarded as controversial. I am regarded as controversial. Why? Because we use facts and speak the truth. And if you speak the truth, you never have to remember what you said. And this is why when you challenge those activists, they get very, very angry because they have to argue from first principles and justify their statements, which they cannot do.

                They don’t have the methods of argument, logic analysis, and they certainly don’t have any repeatable facts. So you get called controversial because your facts do not agree with their emotional opinions and the use of language. And the capture of language now has been a major weapon in attacking the average person to make sure that they do not use certain words. Unfortunately, and I must have a lot of Broken Hill lead in my blood. And I worked at Broken Hill for decades. Unfortunately I don’t abide by those new social constraints. And I will use the vernacular to describe things that we have used those words for half a century. So part of cancelling you and cancelling me and shutting us down, is control of the language. And calling us nut cases or controversial or extreme or right wing. This demonstrates that our opponents cannot argue.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Exactly. And another thing that demonstrates our opponents cannot argue is their claims that there’s a 97% consensus of scientists who claim that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. When you look at their figures and you analyse it, and there’s been a peer-reviewed papers led by Dr. David Legette with scientists and statisticians. Who analyse this claim by John Cook, a false fabricated claim, misrepresenting science, misrepresenting nature. David Legette’s and his co-authors analysed John Cook’s 97% consensus claim and found out when you go through the actual data, there is a not a 97% consensus. There is a 0.3% smattering and not one of those 0.3% smattering has any evidence that carbon dioxide from human activity as bad.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Yes, you’re being very kind. That worked by was fraud. There were 10,000 people who were sent a survey. These are people who put bread and wine on the table from frightening witness about climate. Out of those 10,000, who received Cooks survey, only 3000 replied. He chose 77 of those 3000 replies to publish. One reply wasn’t really in agreement. And that’s was the 3%. So this was a very, very selective survey, picking out certain information and then telling us that 97% of scientists believe this or that.

                Well, belief is not a word of science. It’s a word of religion and politics. The second thing is that science is not like politics, where we all put up and say, “Yes, we believe that the earth is flat. And we believe that the sun rotates around the earth.” Science doesn’t work like that. It works on reproducible evidence. That was fraud. Now, Australia exports, a lot of black stuff. That’s called coal. A lot of that comes from your state Queensland, but John Cook was in Queensland and we exported not black coal, but he’s black soul went to another country. We’ve got rid of him. Thanks be to the Lord.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, then let’s move on to the NASA’s Goddard Institute Space Studies. It’s a tiny group within NASA. And then there’s a tiny, tiny group within the Goddard Institute Space Studies that is responsible for climate studies. We’ve heard so many times that NASA is saying that this climate claims, that climate sphere is all justified. And yet I had correspondence when I entered the Senate as a Senator in Australia. And I held director Gavin Schmidt accountable for some of the work that NASA was doing in corruptly modifying temperature data to raise temperatures artificially. And in his first response back, he made a slip and he showed that inadvertently, he made serious contradictions.

                So when I held him accountable for these contradictions. He stopped writing to me. And then later they reversed their claims about Iceland, temperature data tampering, and reduce them down again. I mean, NASA itself has never said that the climate is a problem. A tiny group of people, activists within the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has said that. And these people need to be held to account. It’s just fraud again, that NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies led by Gavin Schmidt and the previous alarmist James Hansen have spread this nonsense. We’ve got letters from NASAs senior administrators, astronauts who’ve had to rely on science, stating that these guys are speaking bullshit.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we once used to have respect for an institution. Be that the CSIRO, be that a university, be that the church, we once had respect for an institution. We now live in a society where anything goes, this is the attack on Western civilization and climate change is only part of it. But we are attacking Christian religions. We are attacking parliament. We saw that recently in the Senate in Australia, where one Senator being sworn in, gave a Black power salute and wanted to insult the queen. This respect for institutions is disappearing. They are always under attack. And in some cases like NASA, they do it to themselves. In some cases and I would argue, it’s part, the churches have done this. They’ve done it to themselves. So we are living in a society where anything goes, where all opinions are equal. There is no informed opinion. There is no respect for anything or anyone. Yet the same people want to be respected. I think respect has to be earned. I don’t think because you are an oxygen thief that you automatically qualified to get respect.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here. Let’s move on now. Some people I know you have heard about the Stern report. That’s a fraudulent document that was developed in Britain for the government to push this climate rubbish. We had our own equivalent version of the Stern report in Australia. It was the Ghana report, which from memory was released in 2008. I think it was initially a state initiative but then when Kevin Rudd entered power as a prime minister in 2000 late, 2007, he adopted it as well. And I think he pushed it. And I’ll just go to that because a lot of people in our country think that the Ghana report had scientific proof that we need to cut human carbon dioxide. So I’m going to read from chapter two of Ghana’s report, which was used to push the narrative that we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. Chapter two is titled, Understanding Climate Science.

                It states, key points. “The review takes as its starting point on the balance of probabilities. And not as a matter of belief,” I’m sorry, I can’t help laughing. I’ll start again. “The review takes as its starting point on the balance of probabilities and not as a matter of belief, the majority opinion of the Australian and international scientific communities that human activities resulted in substantial global warming from the mid 20th century. And that continued growth in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human induced emissions would generate high risk of dangerous climate change.” No evidence anywhere and yet the media, the politicians run around saying the Ghana report is scientific proof. Ian, what the hell is going on?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Oh, it’s very simple. We’ve had every major institution taken over by activists. We have activists in the church. We have activists in universities. We have activists in schools. The public service is absolutely full of activists. These people are driving the ship because politicians get reappointed every couple of years. These people can outlive them. These people can outstay them. So we’ve had the march of the left. It’s been a 40 year march into all of the institutions. The biggest damage they have done is to dumb down the education system, such that all of the people now in middle level, be they in government be, they in business, have undergone this activist education. So we’ve totally been taken over by activists. And for me, it’s not a war that you can fight. You can fight as we are doing as guerrilla fighters, but we have to wait for the inevitable. And the inevitable will be a financial crisis.

                And then ultimately people will say, “Well, wait a minute. What used to be a very wealthy nation? What happened?” So this is why it’s extremely important to keep fighting the fight. We’ve lost it. We haven’t infiltrated the system 40 or 50 years ago. The left did that, but ultimately there is a price to pay. And the price to pay is going to be very, very nasty indeed. So we have to keep these arguments on the record. We have to keep arguing. We have to fight everything. Now, for example, we have this absolute trivial argument now about the burping and farting of cattle. So just heal out a very simple argument. Grass grows by using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that cattle eat that grass and burp and fight out. Some of the carbon is methane and carbon dioxide. And the rest of the carbon ends up in the meat, in the skin and in bones. We eat that meat that’s sequestered for a little while. The bones, the carbon is sequestered for a little while and in the leather that we have, it’s sequestered for even longer, in say our footwear.

                So if cattle are so bad and eating this grass and farting out methane, belching out methane, what happens if we took the cattle off the ground? If we took the cattle off the field, then the grass would rot. And the grass would give out methane when it rots. And the same number of atoms of carbon that went into growing that grass, the same number of atoms of carbon, that either are extracted by cattle or extracted by rotting of the grass.

                Now that is a total furphy that we’re being fed by our climate activists. So what’s happened is the vegans have got in to the climate activists groups. And they’re trying to tell us we shouldn’t be eating meat and we’re destroying the climate. So we’ve got all these sorts of crazies now, have attracted themselves to the vegan groups in the climate groups. Now I’ve had a bit to do with vegans, when I used to take university field excursions. These geological field excursions were interesting because the meat eaters were the first ones to the top of the mountain. The vegetarians were about halfway up and the vegans were still trying to work out how to get out of the vehicle.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Okay, I want to continue that line in a minute, but first I’m going to go to the InterAcademy Council. If I can collect my thoughts after that, the InterAcademy Council. You’ve heard of that as a noted scientist Professor Plimer?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Yes, yes. Well, I’m in one of the major academies. But they represent my view and don’t listen to my science.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Well, we could talk about the Australian Academy of Science, which is completely lost the plot on climate science. But anyway, the InterAcademy-

Professor Ian Plimer:

Those academies stay alive by government funding. And they have to play in the same key from the same musical script as the government, otherwise they don’t get funding. So this is not fearless and free information that the academies are giving. It’s already contaminated.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And so we’ve been told many times that all the major science academies around the world support this rubbish about climate being affected by carbon dioxide from human activity. None of them have ever provided the evidence. But the InterAcademy Council, which is the combination of many of these national bodies, put out a damning report about 10 years ago. An absolutely damning report about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change. It is the UN’s climate science body, was just shown to be completely incompetent and dishonest and unscientific. And no one raised an eyebrow. Now, I also want to talk about what I call the rats nest of climate alarmist academics. These people in my mind are not scientists at all, but they’ve been paraded as scientists. They’ve been funded by government taxpayers. Funded by us to misrepresent the science. I’m going to read their names out, because these people will be very familiar to some. Tim Flannery, many faults forecasts, which have caused enormous damage, including costing people’s lives.

                Professor Will Steffen, a chemical engineer. Professor David Karoly, a former meteorologist. Ova Goldberg. And I’ve challenged Ova Goldberg and Tim Flannery to debate. And poor old Tim didn’t know which way was up. And his publisher just dragged him away from me. Ova Goldberg, would not debate me. John Cook would not debate me. Another one of these academics. They’re not scientists because they don’t follow the scientific principle. A scientist is someone who follows a scientific process. Matthew England, a climate modeller, mathematician, I believe. Leslie Hughes, Kurt Lambeck, Andy Pitman, Ross Garnaut.

                And then we have a man called Stephan Lewandowsky. And Stephan Lewandowsky is a, I think he’s got something to do with the behavioural scientist. And he made claims that if you don’t agree with these people, then you’re a nut job. So, I mean, these people have been funded by government. They’ve been appointed to the climate commission by the Gillard Government. They’ve been fated by the liberals. They have been funded to spread misrepresentations of climate. I’m trying to find a comment. Would you, if you could make a comment while I’m looking for a summary assessment of Tim Flannery’s report.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, just the very brief comment. These people are funded to put us out of work. Therefore, the amount of revenue collected by taxation will be less. So why not save ourself the pain and not fund them now? And then we do not decrease taxation by having people put out of work by their processes. Now, can you imagine trying to run a foundry and you are trying to pour some bronze and the power goes off. If that freezes, then you have a real problem. Can you imagine how your electricity bill, which you have in an electric arc furnace, you have an electricity bill that’s just gone through the roof. Ultimately you are going to close that business and put people out of work, or you might shift the business to Thailand or somewhere like that. This is what’s happening. Those climate policies, which are catastrophic for the average person are driven by the elites, funded from the taxes of the average person. It is time to say, enough.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And I’m going to read some figures before we go to the break, we’ll have the ad break the last of the hour. And then I’d like you to, when we come back, Ian, if you could talk about the fact that Australia is already at net zero and beyond it, because our sinks of carbon dioxide absorb more carbon dioxide than all of our production. But I want to read these figures, Dr. Wes Allen wrote, what is the first known detailed review of Tim Flannery’s book entitled, The Weather Makers. Dr. Allen’s review reveals that 307 statements in Tim Flannery’s book created 577 problems with some of Tim Flannery statements, creating multiple problems. This Dr. Allen as a meticulous researcher, and he’s put it out there in public, listed them, shown them.

                And what he’s done is he said that, “Baseless, extreme comments in Tim Flannery’s book 14. Baseless, dogmatic comments, 103. Suspect sources of his points, 51. Half truth, 85. The claims that there’s absolute no uncertainty in what he’s saying, 48. Misrepresentations seven. Misinterpretations, 26. Exaggeration, 78. Factual errors, 70. Confusing or silly statements, 43. Contradictory statements, 31. Fail predictions, 11. Mistakes, 10. A grand total of problems, 577 in a book that’s about 200 pages long. This is what passes for science amongst the labour party, the liberal party, the national party, the greens. And amongst these climate activists who are masquerading as scientists, when they’re really academics and not scientists.” So we’ll go for the break and then we’ll come back and listen to Ian Plimer.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Over to you, Ian Plimer. We’re with Ian Plimer and this is Senator Malcolm Roberts in broadcasting from Australia. We are now going to hear one of the best scientists in the world, discuss why we are already at net zero and beyond.

Professor Ian Plimer:

We are very lucky in Australia to have a continent with very, very few inhabitants. We have a large area of grasslands, rangelands and forests and a lot of crop land. And the few people that live in this country live in a coastal fringe and mainly in cities. We are not a country of Crocodile Dundee’s out in the bush. We’re a country of people who absolutely live in cities. So when we look at the amount of carbon dioxide that we release from heavy industries in Australia. And we smelt a lot of the world’s aluminium and zinc and lead and copper, that puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The bulk of our energy comes from hydrocarbons, be it diesel, be it coal for electricity. And when we look at the amount of energy that we create, we could not run this country without coal.

                However, when we look at how much of a carbon dioxide is absorbed into these grasslands, rangelands, forest, crops and the continental shelf, we absorb about 10 times as much carbon dioxide than we emit. We should therefore go to Paris and say, “Pay up. We want countries like Mauritania and Chad and poor countries of the world to pay us because we are absorbing their carbon dioxide emissions.” The whole system of net zero is bonkers. Net zero is a vocabulary invented by people who want different ways of taxing you. It’s got nothing to do with the environment. It’s got everything to do with power and money.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And that leads on to something that I want to raise. The core problem here is shitty governance, comprising gutless politicians seating our sovereignty. There is no scientific data or framework on which they base these policies. The policies today in Australia are based on looking good, not doing good. Looking after vested interest and globalist predators. And Ian, I think you are well aware that the man who started this climate fraud was Maurice Strong from Canada. I haven’t got the time to go into the details. He was a criminal who exiled himself. Wanted by American authorities, the police law enforcement agencies. He was exiled in China. He came back to Canada to die in Ottawa in 2015. His policies, his scam that he initiated. He was a part owner and a director of the Chicago Climate Exchange, where billions of dollars of carbon dioxide emissions trading system credits would be funnelled through. Al Gore, the company he owns, Generation Management Investment is also a part owner of the Chicago climate exchange.

                We are taking money from poor people asking age pensioners to make a choice between staying warm and eating. And these bastards are stealing money to live like Riley. No science, enormous crippling costs imposed on people. And the people pay with their wallets, with their jobs, with their lifestyle, with their lives. For no benefit to the environment, no benefit to humanity and these grubs steal billions of dollars. And then we’ve got other billionaires who are sponsoring people into parliament, so they can keep their subsidies for solar and wind going. This is a complete scam and it is an inhuman scam. What do you say to say Professor?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, that’s exactly right. This is probably the biggest scam we have seen in the history of time. In terms of science, it’s probably the greatest delusional science that we’ve seen since the times, just before Galileo. In terms of morality, we have sunk to new depths and in terms of responsibility, there is none. In my scientific career, I have been working in universities and outside universities. When I was outside universities, I was funded by industry.

                If I got it wrong, I lost my job. When in a university, if I got it wrong, it didn’t matter. I was able to publish and move on. In science, if you get it wrong, there are no consequences. In sociology, if you get it wrong, you get promoted. So we have lost the ethical basis of science. And I think this structural breakdown of institutional ethics is one of the reasons why your Maurice Strong and these others have been able to thrive. And there’s a whole army of acolytes there feeding off those who pay them. And eventually they are going to kill those who pay them. This is why I called my latest book, Green Murder. This process has taken 40 or 50 years to get there. And the only way I can see we can get out of this mess is to have a deeply destructive recession.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And that’s a very sad thing to say, because I’d like to finish on a positive, which you’ll come to in a minute. I’m with Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer, one of the world’s best scientists, highly awarded, a prolific author. We have been discussing my letter to the four Amigos on climate, the previous prime minister, the previous deputy prime minister, the previous opposition leader, and the then and current Greens leader, Adam Bandt. You can find that letter at Malcolm Roberts, qld.com.au, just scroll down to the climate fraud icon, click on that, and then scroll down to letter to the leaders, the climate change scam. And you can see what we’ve been talking about. I want to mention Professor Plimer, some from Professor Plimer’s books, these cover of huge gamut of interest, everything from serious scientific to discussions about humanity. To basic books like mineral collecting localities of the Broken Hill district, for people who are interested in rocks.

                Now I’ve got another book, Telling Lies for God. Let’s just think about the diversity of this man’s ability. Next one, A Journey Through Stone, Mineral Collecting Localities of the Broken Hill, Tibooburra and White Cliffs areas. This man gets down into the details. Milos: Geologic History, A Short History of Planet Earth, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. How to get expelled from School, now that is a ripper. So is that Heaven and Earth. Not for Greens and then Ian has taken up the cut of protecting humanity. Heaven and Earth again, Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Rip-off, Green Murder, a life sentence of net zero with no parole, go to Connor Court Publishing. They have been your publishers, I think all the time, Professor Plimer, anything to add to that because I find your books fascinating.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, I’ve published a number of best sellers in the past, through major international publishers, like Random House. And I had also published stuff through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And when I had the manuscript of Heaven and Earth ready to go, no publisher would touch me because I was questioning human induced climate change. It was eventually a very small husband and wife publisher that took it on. It made them a fortune. It was an international bestseller.

                So for those of you out there who are thinking of publishing your ideas, it’s quite often not the major publishers that will touch you. They’re not interested at all in the issue. They’re only interested in making money. And when Heaven and Earth was really humming away and selling very well. I had a publisher ring me and say, “Look, we’d like to republish your book, A Short History of Planet Earth.” And I said, “Well, that book came out 20 years ago. And the science has moved on. That some of these science that I wrote there now has been replaced by better science and there are better ideas. I’m not prepared to republish something that is knowingly wrong.” And they were persisting telling me I’d make a fortune. I wasn’t interested in that. I’m interested in facts and speaking the truth. That makes me controversial.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And we appreciate you so much because there are so few scientists these days. So few politicians who will do that. I’m going to lead the final word to Professor Plimer. But before I do that, this is Malcolm Roberts, Senator in Australia. I am staunchly pro-human and a believer in the inherent goodness in human beings. Please remember to listen to each other, love one another, stay proud of who we are as humans. Take a minute to appreciate the abundance all around us. Ian, over to you. You have one minute to tell us why we need to get back to basics and be so positive about Australia. We have the people, the resources we have the opportunity, the potential. Mate, what do you want to say? And thank you so much.

Professor Ian Plimer:

There are very few people, very few people on this continent. We are blessed with resources. If we look at history countries or nations with very few people and a lot of resources, inevitably got invaded. Go and talk to the Carthaginians or the Thracians, go and talk to those that Alexander the Great invaded. The only way this country can be strong is to use its resources and its humans to have a vibrant economy, a big defence system and people who are great lovers and supporters of their country. And when I finally shuffle off, I just hope someone will in the eulogy say, he gave the cage a bloody good rattle.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you so much, Professor Ian Plimer, well done.

In the election campaign Anthony Albanese promised Australians he would cut power bills by $275 a year. Not only did he say he hoped to do that, he said he knew it would happen. Now he’s walking away from his election promise.

Feelings will not keep the lights on, supermarket freezers cold or hospitals open. Feelings will not warm Australians in winter or cool us in summer. Evidence based policy will. Energy deficits in several areas of Australia have already caused blackouts. The 43 per cent target will cause many more blackouts.

The average spot price of $264 per megawatt hour last quarter is more than triple the average spot price of $85 per megawatt hour this time last year. Prime Minister Albanese knew this when he made his promise, and clearly economics is not the Prime Minister’s strong suit. If the cost of an item is up 300 per cent, the chances of being able to make it cheaper without the government paying for it are zero.

All I’m hearing so far is, ‘Build more wind and solar.’ Building more will simply add more capacity when we don’t need it, during the day, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Solar and wind will need to be paired with some form of battery technology to move that generated electricity from the day, when we don’t need it, to the evening, when we do.

Coal sitting in hoppers ready to generate power on demand is the battery we have used successfully for 120 years. Alternatives to coal are thin on the ground. Battery storage costs are staggering and unsustainable: $1.5 million per megawatt hour. We need around 60,000 megawatt hours of energy in storage to ensure any 24-hour period is not subject to blackouts, yet batteries need 20 per cent above rated capacity to achieve full charge due to heat loss, which is why they catch fire a lot.

This means we need 72,000 megawatt-hours of storage, at a cost of $108 billion every 12 years, the life of a big Tesla battery. That is $9 billion every year. The Snowy 2 big hydro battery currently under construction will provide 1,000 megawatt-hours daily for 365 a year at a cost of $5 billion.

This means that pumped hydro will cost $300 billion to carry enough power for just one day. Of course, adding electric vehicle charging to the mix means a whole lot more blackouts and a whole lot more electricity price increases.

Net zero is an unaffordable fairy tale that will destroy our standard of living and destroy our lifestyle.

While PM Albanese wants electricity-grid wrecking net-zero, he will never be able to deliver his promised $275 cheaper power bills. That’s why he has had to walk away from his first election promise already.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support Senator Payne’s matter of public importance. Prime Minister Albanese’s promise to reduce electricity bills by $275 and his promise to reduce carbon dioxide output by 43 per cent are mutually exclusive. High energy prices will reduce energy usage and assist Australia to reach the 43 per cent figure. Lower prices will increase energy consumption, and that will work against the Albanese government’s target. That’s why the Albanese government so quickly ran away from his promise. The Prime Minister never intended to honour the promise, making his action cynical political expediency.

One Nation believes any attempt to implement a 43 per cent carbon dioxide reduction is a policy based on lies and distortions which do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Prime Minister Albanese has already signalled, across several issues, his government will be a government based on virtue signalling, not a sensible policy. For senators with no data on their side, the only option is to sell a policy on feelings. Feelings will not keep the lights on, supermarket freezers cold or hospitals open. Feelings will not warm Australians in winter or cool us in summer. Evidence based policy will. Energy deficits in several areas of Australia have already caused blackouts. The 43 per cent target will cause many more blackouts.

Rapidly increasing electricity costs will reduce consumption of electricity and buy the government time, while it asks around for a permanent solution, which is why the government is allowing this to happen. Closing down and sabotaging baseload coal has led to the national electricity racket—sorry market—showing unprecedented wholesale power prices. The average spot price of $264 per megawatt hour last quarter is more than triple the average spot price of $85 per megawatt hour this time last year. Prime Minister Albanese knew this when he made his promise, and clearly economics is not the Prime Minister’s strong suit. If the cost of an item is up 300 per cent, the chances of being able to make it cheaper without the government paying for it are zero.

Perhaps the Prime Minister can extend his employment talkfest to more aspects of government business. Let’s see if anyone knows how to use wind and solar to replace baseload coal and save Australia from electricity and energy Armageddon, because all I’m hearing so far is, ‘Build more wind and solar.’ Building more will simply add more capacity when we don’t need it, during the day, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Solar and wind will need to be paired with some form of battery technology to move that generated electricity from the day, when we don’t need it, to the evening, when we do.

Coal sitting in hoppers ready to generate power on demand is the battery we have used successfully for 120 years. Alternatives to coal are thin on the ground. Battery storage costs are staggering and unsustainable: $1.5 million per megawatt hour. We need around 60,000 megawatt hours of energy in storage to ensure any 24-hour period is not subject to blackouts, yet batteries need 20 per cent above rated capacity to achieve full charge due to heat loss, which is why they catch fire a lot. This means we need 72,000 megawatt-hours of storage, at a cost of $108 billion every 12 years, the life of a big Tesla battery. That is $9 billion every year. The Snowy 2 big hydro battery currently under construction will provide 1,000 megawatt-hours daily for 365 a year at a cost of $5 billion. This means that pumped hydro will cost $300 billion to carry enough power for just one day. Of course, adding electric vehicle charging to the mix means a whole lot more blackouts and a whole lot more electricity price increases.

Net zero is an unaffordable fairy tale that will destroy our standard of living and destroy our lifestyle. We are one community, we are one nation and we know what the hell is needed to get back to affordable, reliable, stable electricity.

Alan Finkel is right when he says we are at a turning point in history. There are two paths for Australia to choose between. One leads to a country where manufacturing thrives and everyone, including the poor, enjoys better living standards on the back of affordable and reliable power. On the other, power prices continue to rise, and the stability of our grid is at risk.

With the highest amount of wind, solar and battery power feeding into the grid in history, Australia’s wholesale power prices have never been higher. All Australians are going to feel the brunt of these price increases. This is a primary cause of our current inflation and it will only get worse, as I have been warning for two years.

Despite net-zero rhetoric, there is an unavoidable truth. Wind and solar cannot solve high power prices and inflation.

Committing to net-zero means that  Government has signed a blank cheque to the wind, solar and battery industry whose only solution is more of the same power shortages and high prices.

For example, the closure of the Liddell coal fired power station will be a loss of 2000MW of dispatchable power.

With unreliable renewables operating on average at 23% of their rated capacity because wind and solar take days off, Australia will need hundreds of square kilometres of solar panels to replace Liddell.[1]

Those hundreds of square kilometres of panels, even running at full capacity, won’t guarantee power is being made when needed. Solar power peaks at midday, far away from the peak demand in the early morning and evening. Wind droughts lasting months have wreaked havoc in Europe.[2] Batteries cannot and won’t fix the gap.

The largest battery in Australia can supply 300MW for an hour and a half, a pittance compared to the 2000MW Liddell could produce.[3] That’s even before we consider that because of transmission and power conversion, battery storage might waste around 20% of the power we use to charge them.[4]

What does all this mean? Wind and solar subsidies force other, more reliable sources of power out of the market. Coal generators are forced into early retirement. Nuclear can’t even be investigated.

Wind and solar are inefficient and intermittent. There is less supply of electricity and it is more unreliable. That makes power more expensive and risky for businesses, employers and wage-earners.

Wind, solar and battery advocates claim that a ‘plan to transition the grid’ can solve all this. What is rarely said is that the plan to ditch coal could cost $320 billion, a cost that one way or another Australians will have to pay from their hip pocket.[5]

Australia is facing down the barrel of a cost of living and inflation crisis. We must abandon the ill-advised forced uptake of wind and solar that is going to keep making power bills more expensive.

Instead, we must stop demonizing coal and build coal fired power stations to cover our transition. Power companies must know that the government won’t force coal to go broke so they can freely invest to maintain their existing assets and build more.

Wherever possible we must build dams with hydro power and retro fit hydro. Snowy Hydro 2.0 has laid bare the false promises of pumped hydro.[6]

And finally, we must investigate nuclear power. Australia has had a nuclear reactor running in Lucas Heights, Sydney since 1958.[7] Australia’s ban on nuclear power is no longer fit for purpose. Everything must be on the table to be investigated if it means bringing Australia’s power bills down.

Although electricity from nuclear is typically more expensive than coal and hydro, in places such as South Australia with its massive uranium reserves and low thermal value coal, nuclear needs to be considered.

It may be years before some of these solutions take effect, but it will be even longer if we do not start them now. Decades of politicians making decisions for the next election instead of the next generation has left Australia with this cost of living and inflation crisis. We must act today with a vision for the future, rooted in reality and with the sole focus of making Australian living cheaper and easier while being environmentally responsible.


[1] For example, 1800Mw Liddell output at 90%, 10-30% capacity factor of solar, estimated 2-3ha (0.02-.03sqkm) per MW of solar power

[2] https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135

[3] https://www.energy-storage.news/victorian-big-battery-australias-biggest-battery-storage-system-at-450mwh-is-online/#:~:text=The%20Victorian%20Big%20Battery%2C%20a,for%20the%20state%20of%20Victoria.

[4] https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=1y&interval=1w Battery (Charging) vs. Battery (Discharging)

[5] https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/why-it-will-cost-320b-to-ditch-coal-in-three-maps-and-a-chart-20220608-p5as3t

[6] https://www.smh.com.au/national/five-years-on-snowy-2-0-emerges-as-a-10-billion-white-elephant-20220310-p5a3ge.html

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Flux_Australian_Reactor


As the cost of living pinches Australian households, the Morrison-Joyce government favours foolish net zero targets, rather than investing in a new power station for Australia’s energy affordability and security.

Shine Energy’s coal-fired Collinsville power station in North Queensland is a community-led project dedicated to providing affordable energy using Australia’s clean coal reserves and can be a vital part of Australia’s national energy and industry security.

Senator Roberts said, “An election campaign brings out the duplicitous politicking from our politicians, when they choose their words of support so carefully that the back door is always open for reneging.

“Barnaby Joyce’s lame private statements of support for the business case of Collinsville power station is no green light for the power station to go ahead.”

The Morrison-Joyce government and Labor share and continue a deceitful and dishonest stance on coal. 

Senator Roberts added, “When spruiking to city voters, it’s all about net zero and “dirty” coal, then they clean up their act in the regional areas and spruik clean coal, jobs and energy security.

“Australian voters have listened to these politicians speak with forked tongues over coal for years now, while they continue to pander to globalist agendas and put our national energy security and people’s jobs and livelihoods at risk.”

One Nation alone provides voters with a consistent and strong message about the value of Australia’s coal-fired and technologically advanced power stations for energy security, jobs and reducing our cost of living.

One Nation is the only party of energy security. One Nation is the only party of energy affordability.

I’ve pursued allegations of fraud, conflicts of interest and risk management about the Coal Long Service Leave Corporation for years. Finally, an independent review has confirmed dozens of governance and fraud risks that have left casual workers without their fair entitlements. It’s a hard-fought win for casual coal miners by One Nation, but there is still much further to go.

Transcript

CHAIR: Senator Sheldon, you are making a statement. We will now go to Senator Roberts.

Senator Cash: Do you feel better, Senator Sheldon, for getting that off your chest because—

Senator SHELDON: I do feel better.

Senator Cash: I’m glad you do because, as I said, I don’t believe, Senator Sheldon, that you as the head of the TWU would indulge in this behaviour. I don’t believe that you, three years later, after a case has been dismissed by the full bench of the Federal Court, would actually stand up and say, and make admissions, the national executive did not approve any of the 20 donations, the subject of the investigation, which contravened the registered organisations act. As I said, that was as recently as December 2021. You’re referring to a statement made on 7 March this year, I would reflect, backed on the admissions made by the AWU in December 2021—a range of admissions concerning contraventions by the AWU. They submitted they made mistakes; they did not comply. So I think, if anyone’s providing an apology, perhaps the AWU should apologise to its members for those contraventions.

Senator SHELDON: And the minor breaches that they were fully aware of throughout the entire five years—

CHAIR: Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Senator Sheldon.

Senator Cash: Senator Sheldon, as you and I know, you need to comply—

Senator SHELDON: The ROC was fully aware that they were minor breaches all the way through, and yet they continued to pursue it.

Senator Cash: You and I are going to have to agree to disagree in relation to the incorrect information you’re providing by way of your questioning.

Senator SHELDON: That’s not incorrect. It was minor breaches, and they were fully aware for the whole five years, and they dragged this out—

Senator SMALL: Who decides whether it’s major or it’s minor? Is that how you plan to act in government?

CHAIR: Order! Order, Senator Small! We would like now to move on to Senator Roberts, who has a series of questions on a different topic.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for appearing today. Most of my questions, I think, will be going to the minister, or certainly to the department. Minister, recently KPMG presented their report into Coal LSL. How are you progressing in relation to implementation of this review and report, and when will it be completed? I understand that some are immediate and some are—

Senator Cash: Understood. I know this is a genuine interest for you, so what I will do is ask Ms Williams to take these questions for you.

Ms T Williams : Senator, you asked how we are progressing with implementation of the recommendations. As you might know, the government has accepted all 20 recommendations of the review. In terms of the 10 recommendations specifically directed at government, the government response to the review identified that the government will take legislative action to clarify eligible employees and ensure that no eligible employee is worse off; ensure fairness for casuals to be treated equitably with permanent employees; address legacy coverage issues to ensure fairness and transparency for employees, employers and employers that may register with the scheme; and strengthen decision-making, review and dispute resolution to enhance accountability and compliance.

The government response to the review really highlights that. It recognises that the reforms are complex and they will require further technical legal advice to ensure that the changes really have the desired impact and benefit for employees and employers under the scheme. The intention is for consultation and action to continue in the spirit of the review, which, as you may be aware, included consultation with producers, employer groups and peak bodies, employers, employees, unions and representatives from modern industry stakeholders. We’ll draw on their expertise and stress test ideas going forward. We’ll need to do that closely and methodically with the stakeholders, including the provision of exposure drafts of legislation. The department is just working through that now, and consultations will begin as soon as practicable.

Senator ROBERTS: I can understand that it’s still being digested. When do you think the plan will be available—or you will have one, even if you’re not sharing it?

Ms T Williams : We’re working through. The review also canvassed that there were a number of existing proposals put to government and suggested that they provided a really good foundation to start to work through some of those ideas. The department is working through that now. In terms of the exact specifics of the consultation, we’ll provide advice to government in due course.

Senator ROBERTS: Reading parts of the report—I haven’t read the whole report—I believe some can be remedied by legislative changes, some can be remedied by the existing proposals and some can be remedied by further consultation. When do you think you will you have the plan together?

Ms T Williams : We’re working on that now. The specifics of that will be a decision for government but, as I said, it will continue in the spirit of the review and be broad-ranging in terms of the consultations. I think the other thing that the review really recognises is the deep industry expertise from employers and employees in this sector and also a real commitment by all the stakeholders that were consulted in the review to get this right. So we’ll provide advice to government on how to take that forward, but the consultations will be very much in that vein.

Mr Hehir : I might just add to that. We’re still some months away. The consultation process will still take a few months to work our way through. Then, following the consultation process, we’ll need to put our advice to government. So we’re still some months away.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I will just go to page 126, and I’ll read the main points, the issues in red that are not—

Senator Cash: Just hold on for one moment. Have you got the whole—

Ms T Williams : Yes, I do.

Senator Cash: It will assist if the official is reading it with you.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a fairly simple question, even though the question will be long. I’ll read out the issues not addressed—the ones in red. On waiver agreements, it says:

The Existing Proposals do not substantively address this issue.

The report says the same thing about conflicts of interest, which it says are significant; allegations of fraud; culture; communications; risk management; adoption of technology; data security and privacy; and validation of data. So none of them are being addressed. For each of them, the report says:

The Existing Proposals do not substantively address this issue.

When do you think you will have something around those? They’re the core issues. That’s not a complaint about the report; the report is fine. But we need to understand when they will be addressed.

Ms T Williams : I will just clarify for you that this section of the report is actually talking about the existing proposals that were put to government before the government realised, or in the process of the government realising, that we needed to have a holistic response to the issues in the sector. So these proposals were actually put by stakeholders, and then the government commissioned an independent review. So the review itself and the recommendations do cover those issues. I think conflicts of interest are covered by recommendation 11.

Senator ROBERTS: What about changes to the board structure and composition?

Ms T Williams : That’s recommendation 13. So they are all covered by the review. This is really talking about how, before the government commissioned the review, those existing proposals had that gap in them. So we commissioned the review, which has now addressed those areas.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much. Now I’d like to move onto the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, the FEG. These are simple questions. You may have to take them on notice. My first question is: have the Fair Entitlements Guarantee and Coal LSL paid any Coal LSL entitlements to One Key employees who no longer work in the coalmining industry and were not CFMMEU members?

Mr Manning : Is this about the One Key workforce case?

Senator ROBERTS : Yes.

Mr Manning : Ms Saunders, who will be coming up from our waiting room downstairs, should be able to answer that for you. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a room next door today. But we wouldn’t be told whether or not they were union members. We wouldn’t ask that on the application form. So I’m not sure about that, but, when Ms Saunders arrives, she might be able to answer it. You might need to repeat the question, though, because she’s had to come from downstairs.

Ms Saunders : Would you mind repeating the question?

Senator ROBERTS: Sure. It’s from a constituent. Have the Fair Entitlements Guarantee and Coal LSL paid any Coal LSL entitlements to One Key employees who no longer work in the coalmining industry and were not CFMMEU members?

Ms Saunders : Under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, we pay the five basic employment entitlements: redundancy pay, long-service leave, wages, annual leave and payment in lieu of notice. So our consideration of that doesn’t actually take into account the extent to which they are funded by another organisation, except that, if there is a redundancy trust fund or whatever that will step in to pay a portion of the cost, that is not covered under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee program. I guess, in the sense that any entitlements that were payable under their governing instruments would have been paid under FEG, to the extent that they were eligible for it. For example, with One Key Workforce we paid 346 claimants a total of a $6.8 million in FEG assistance. That covered a range of entitlements.

Senator ROBERTS: What was the total figure?

Ms Saunders : It was $6.8 million.

Mr Hehir : Recognising that covered off a number of different employee entitlements.

Ms Saunders : I don’t have the detail of what made up that in terms of the different entitlements that were covered. I can take that on notice.

Senator ROBERTS: If you could, please. I’d like to understand this issue because it involves some constituents in the Hunter Valley. My next question is: why did the Fair Entitlements Guarantee not pay One Key employees who were non-CFMEU members all entitlements owed under the black coal award, including shift penalties and overtime rates?

Ms Saunders : Okay.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a complex issue, but it should be able to be boiled down once you have the data. I’m happy to take it on notice.

Senator Cash: You’re happy for us to take it?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I’d like to get to the bottom of it.

Senator Cash: Yes, understood.

Senator ROBERTS: Finally, the issues raised in here show—I won’t say neglect, but times are changing across industry and the cracks that are exposed in Coal LSL itself are significant for employees and some employers. They’re very important, but they’re minor relative to the cracks in the Fair Work Act that have been exposed with changes in industry and in employment practices over time. Minister, is the government open to comprehensive review of industrial relations? The reason I ask is that Dave Noonan and heads of the CFMEU and the ETU have said they welcome a comprehensive, fair approach to reviewing and revising industrial relations. The Business Council of Australia has told me that they’re open to it as well and they support it. Large employers have told me the same. Small business is crying out for it, and medium businesses are as well. The industrial relations club which consists of major union bosses, major employers, major industry groups, consultants and lawyers are feeding off this, but the workers are not protected. Even unionised workers are not protected today, and they’re coming to us. The Fair Work Act is so complex that people are trying to detour around it, and that’s adding even more complexity. We need to restore fairness, entitlements and protections to workers—especially fairness to the small businesses. Are you open to comprehensive review of industrial relations?

Senator Cash: I think the government is always prepared to listen to stakeholders—it’s obviously subject to the ability to get anything through the Australian Senate—to make the system a better one, a more productive one, both for employers and for employees. You do raise a good point, though, in relation to the complexity of the system, and I might just ask the official who was talking about the budget announcements that we have made in relation to small businesses in particular being able to better navigate the system to come back to the table, because this is something that you and I had actually spoken about. We have made a budget announcement, so it’s embedded in the budget. But this is, in particular, to assist small businesses to be able to better understand and better navigate the Fair Work Act as it currently stands. If you would just indulge us for two or three minutes, I will get you this information.

Ms Huender : The government’s providing $5.6 million over four years to the Fair Work Commission to establish a dedicated small business unit within the Fair Work Commission to provide tailored support to small businesses to assist them to navigate the system. We’re aware that small businesses are a big part of the Australian economy, with 3½ million businesses employing over 40 per cent of the workforce. However, they do find the system complex. They don’t have the support of HR managers or legal support, so they also find navigating the system costly. So this unit’s designed to provide strategic leadership and to develop improved information resources and case management support for small businesses when they engage with the system. Small businesses, I understand, make up 50 per cent of the Fair Work Commission’s customers, as it were, but they represent 95 per cent of first-time users.

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, that’s necessary, but it just reemphasises my point. It’s a moribund, complicated, inefficient system. And I’m thinking now that, for not only small business but also workers in the Hunter Valley for some of the world’s largest companies, workers in Central Queensland, workers for other large companies, some of the things that are going on with the COVID injection mandates are just despicable. I could tell you stories that would really shock you. We’re not living in a Third-World country, but we’re behaving as if we are, and some workers have no longer got basic protections and basic entitlements.

Senator Cash: I would disagree.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s like we’re living in a Third-World country.

Senator Cash: And I understand, because you genuinely do prosecute this case that every estimates and in relation to, in particular, the size of the Fair Work Act now and its growth over time.

Unidentified speaker: I’m disappointed you didn’t bring it along today!

Senator Cash: As I’ve said, the government is always prepared to work with stakeholders, employers and employees, to take on board the feedback to improve the system. Ultimately, though, changes are to the Fair Work Act itself, and those changes do need to be got through the Australian Senate. I think the perfect example—and you and I had many discussions on this—was the omnibus bill. There were significant parts of that bill that would have given more certainty to certain sectors et cetera, but we just could not get that through the Australian Senate.

With your support, though, we of course rectified the Rossato decision, and that was later, obviously, confirmed in the High Court of Australia. That was an incredibly important decision, as you know, because of the uncertainty that it had given to small businesses that they might end up with what we’d estimated to be I think it was up to a $38 billion or $39 billion liability. We couldn’t even get the support of the Australian Labor Party to actually take that impost off small businesses. You worked with us, and I was very appreciative of that, and we did make that change.

But, in relation to the other parts of the bill, again I’m prepared to work with people. I think a better system, a simpler system and a more productive system—but it has to reflect the needs of both employers and employees—is a good situation to aspire to, but ultimately, as you know, it does come down to the ability to get legislation through the Senate, and we can’t get the Labor Party or the Greens to support that type of productive change.

Senator ROBERTS: We had to work with small businesses to identify issues that they had, and we were pleased that the government resolved some of those issues and put our suggestions into the revised act. But, again, your recounting of the situation, while accurate, reinforces the need for change, because it is just so difficult and such a complex environment, with so many stakeholders hanging on by their fingernails. It’s just out of date and it’s hurting workers.

Senator Cash: As I said, you and I have had many discussions over many years now, and we’ve always worked constructively together in this regard, with a commitment to improving the system for both employees and employers. Ultimately, though, it is difficult to get through the Australian Senate. But what I think it does show is that it’s not therefore about one policy lever. If that policy lever is difficult to actually pull and properly implement because of the nature of the Australian Senate, you do then need to look at other ways that you can deliver for small business.

You and I have long talked about lowering taxes. When you look at, say, the tax rate for small business, under the Australian Labor Party it was 30 per cent; under us it is currently 25 per cent. So, whilst that’s not the industrial relations system as such, it is another way that you can ensure that you’re giving back to small business. I know, throughout COVID-19, even just the ability to change the way you process documents to allow for that—the e-technology certainly assists them. There is the availability of the instant asset write-off and the ability to say to them, ‘If you have that capacity to invest in your business, the government’s going to back you every step of the way.’ If one lever proves difficult, there are other levers that you can then look to utilise to ensure that you are responding in every possible way to that commitment that they are the backbone of the Australian economy, that they deserve to be backed by government, which is what we do. In relation to those changes, the omnibus bill is the perfect example: it was a very reasonable bill that would have provided both employers and employees with a more productive workplace, but we couldn’t get it through the Senate. I was grateful for the support you gave on the Rosato decision.

Senator ROBERTS: You fiddling with the tax system, and I don’t mean that derogatorily.

Senator Cash: I know what you’re saying.

Senator ROBERTS: The tax system makes the Fair Work Commission and Fair Work Act look simple. It doesn’t fix basic safety protections that have gone AWOL in workplace relations. It doesn’t fix the basic employer-employee relationship, which is the primary relationship of any workplace and must be such. We need something that’s comprehensively reformed and brought back to something simple that looks after the primary workplace relationship between employer and employee.

Senator Cash: On safety: I think that, for each one of us, that has to be paramount in the workplace. There are no two ways about that. I know that, when I first came into portfolio and I worked very closely with Mr Hehir on this, we were presented with the outcome of the Boland review. That was something that I looked at. As you know, there are model work health and safety laws, and the Commonwealth works with the states and territories to ensure that we can effect change that is recommended to us. We had the Boland review, we had the recommendations of the Boland review and I worked constructively with our state and territory colleagues regardless of political persuasion. If you’re, the relevant minister I work with you. I was very pleased that, within a few weeks of me formally come portfolio, all relevant ministers across Australia had agreed to accept all the recommendations coming out of the Boland review.

So certainly, when it comes do work health and safety, I have a very good relationship with state and territory ministers, and we will make improvements to the model work health and safety laws together by accepting all of the Boland review’s recommendations.

Senator ROBERTS: Notwithstanding what you just said, I have enjoyed working with Mr Hehir. I have found him easy to deal with and open to deal with.

Senator Cash: Thank you for that feedback.

Senator ROBERTS: But there are people being severely injured, not even reporting and then being threatened if they dare raise safety issues in this country, and that’s not good enough. I’m happy to leave it there, but it is an issue that’s really important, and we will be pushing it.

Senator Cash: Thank you for those questions.

Companies have been using labour hire contracts to cut wages and benefits for workers. Our One Nation ‘Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022’ will put an end to this unfair abuse.

Transcript

In the last Senate week I introduced my bill to make sure workers employed under labour hire contracts are paid the same rate of pay as workers who are employed directly in certain awards, including the black coal Mining Industry Award and the Aircraft cabin crew award. You know, breadwinner jobs used to be able to provide for a family on one wage and still buy a home, a car and have holidays.

Labour hire contracts are one of the devices that large corporations are now using to drive down wages in industries that have traditionally provided breadwinner jobs. My bill, this bill, will help to bring a better life for Australian workers. Coal mining is in my blood. I started work as a coalface minor for three years underground, including in the Hunter, before progressing to mine management.

The exploitation I have seen lately in the coal mining industry is an absolute disgrace. This bill is the product of work I’ve been doing for years with Hunter Valley coal miners and Queensland coal miners.

One Nation was instrumental in achieving positive change to the Fair Work Act in 2021, including protections for casual workers and casual conversion rights for workers: casual to permanent, improvements to work health and safety incident reporting, proper payment of workers compensation, proper payment of accident pay, proper leave and freedom of speech for casuals who are threatened with the sack if they speak up about saefty.

Labour hire contracts have been exploiting workers for years and the CMFEU Union bosses, the mine owners and the Labor Party and the liberal national governments in New South Wales and Canberra have done nothing about it, and they don’t want to do anything about it. Union bosses do very well, very nicely out of these labour hire contracts.

The One Nation, Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022, will put an end to this unfair abuse. With our previous work and this Bill, One Nation is now the party of the workers.

And stay tuned we’ve got a lot more coming.

It is a disgrace that the QLD Workplace Health and Safety prosecutor did not charge and make accountable the Grosvenor Mine operators for the badly injured casual coal miners in the mine explosion in May 2020.

Senator Roberts said, “Anglo American have a duty of care to its workforce, and it is inexplicable that an explosion can occur, five miners get badly injured and almost die, and there is no accountability back to the operator.

“Anglo American are treating its casual coal miners as literally being expendable with no serious consequences of their neglect to the keep the mine safe for workers now and in the future.”

Senator Roberts has listened with casual coal miners in NSW and QLD and some of the serious mining incidents can be traced to the culture of disrespect and exploitation of coal mine workers.  The culture of penny-pinching, fear and intimidation is especially prevalent in the growing casual / labour hire segment

Senator Roberts said, “It is a gross injustice that casual miners are discouraged from reporting safety issues for fear of losing their jobs.

Queensland Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee consists of majority membership of mine owners / operators and unions, and neither group represent nor have any interaction with casual coal miners.

Senator Roberts said, “The casual coal miner does not have a place at the table, nor any representation, on key committees that determine safety standards and address safety concerns. “The Labor Palaszczuk government has no integrity when it comes to keeping casual coal miners safe.”

After an independent report vindicated One Nation and casual coal miner’s accusations of unscrupulous malpractice, the pressure has been on the Coal Long Service Leave Scheme to give workers a fair go and on Government to clean up their agency. Coal LSL initially tried to refuse coming to Senate Estimates and over the course of many more sessions repeatedly denied anything was wrong. We now know that was a lie.

Transcript

Chair.

Okay, thank you. I will go to Senator Roberts.

Thank you chair, and thank you for attending again. And, my first question is going to the to the minister, and I note that the KPMG review of Coal LSL report came out today.

Yes.

I haven’t seen it, but it came out.

Yes, it’s out.

So we’re looking forward to reading that. Thank you very much for arranging that.

Thank you for working so constructively with government on it.

Well, it’s a big concern as you know, for us, the coal miners in Queensland and New South Wales. Now, I note that KPMG was engaged to undertake the review of Coal LSL, in relation to the underpayment and abuse of casual coal miners. KPMG has also conducted the audit of Coal LSL. Doesn’t that create a conflict of interest? And what did you do to manage this conflict? Because the audit could have influenced the review and the review could have influenced the audit.

Look, I don’t regard that as giving rise to a conflict of interest. There was no direct financial interest for KPMG to do anything other than act consistently, with its duties as an independent examiner there.

Senator, I’m aware there was an audit,

and commissioned by the corporations, it’s conducted by PWC.

During procurement processor. When we selected an independent review and a KPMG, we looked at any consultant and at the time with engaged to buy. The corporations may causing a perception of a conflict interest, we have exclude them. So at the time we engaged KPMG and the KPMG wasn’t working with the collective corporations or any other projects, but Miss Pearl Kumar may have given updates on. Are they been engaging KPMG on the consult?

You welcome, thank Senator. Thank you, Senator.

I can confirm that KPMG has not been engaged by Coal LSL to conduct any work. They’ve not been involved in our internal audit programmes. They’re not engaged by the ANAO to do our external audit. So, from, yeah, I think we’re confident to say that any conflict of interest certainly wouldn’t exist with KPMG conducting that work on us.

Now I’m going to leave out my second question because the report may, the review report may address that. So I’ll just go straight to my third. When will Coal LSL fix its broken system that disadvantages coal miners, casual coal miners everywhere? And when would you remove the biassed and conflicted members from the board, so workers get a fair go? I’m talking here specifically about what I see and what we’ve talked about for a long time now. The conflicts of interest with having significant, well 50/50 minerals council in New South Wales and CFMEU from New South Wales involved. When will that be addressed?

Senator Roberts, without wanting to spoil your reading, because you know, spoiler alerts are sometimes needed on these things. One of the recommendations in the report is that there’d be independent directors added to the board and the expectation that that would assist with dealing with the problem you raise.

Okay. Thank you. We’re pleased to hear that. Last question, Chair. The one key resources case where many casual coal miners missed out on their fair pay back pay conditions, seems to have been blatant phoenixing to us. Yet, this rip-off of workers was accepted by your government, the courts, labour and the CFMEU and Hunter Valley. More needs to be done to protect casual coal workers to get equal pay and entitlements and safety. One nation has proposed the equal pay for equal work bill to protect casual coal workers. What are you doing to make sure that this doesn’t happen again people have lost there.

The KPMG report and I’ll paraphrase somewhat here, acknowledges that there has been difficulties and confusion associated with a lack of clarity on what constitutes a black coal worker and also the changing environment and timetables on which people work. It plans out our ways in which that can be dealt with so that we don’t face that problem in future. It also provides some good recommendations for how to resolve those concerns as they have arisen in the past. I’m optimistic that as we implement the government’s response to those recommendations, we will have that in a more satisfactory place for everyone involved.

Because this is affecting tens of thousands of families who are significantly underpaid compared with permanent workers doing the same job. But it’s just one of a suite of issues. This is just, it’s very important to coal miners. And we’ve been relentless in this, and we’re pleased to see what you’re doing, but it’s a one tiny aspect of the bigger picture, which we can.

Look, I share your sincere concern for making sure that this works for everybody. And that’s why I’m really optimistic that what’s come to us through the KPMG report, and all the recommendations to government have been accepted, in, you know one form or another. And I’m really pleased to say that we’ll be working to do what’s necessary to make all of that much more functional for the future.

I look forward to reading the report and thank you chair.

Thank you, Senator Roberts.