Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Grayndler attacked the Prime Minister and Ian Macfarlane at the start of his address in relation to the matter of public importance:

The need for strong Government action to address the threat posed to Australia’s environment and economy by dangerous climate change.

To support the Prime Minister and Minister Macfarlane, Professor RM Carter, head of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, says in the IPA Review of September 2004:

Droughts, floods, hailstorms and cyclones are natural weather events which human populations have always managed reactively. No empirical relationship has yet been observed between modest temperature changes of a degree or so and the frequency or intensity of such events.

Secondly, Ian Plimer, professor of geology at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, wrote in March 2003 in the same review:

Maybe the global warming of the twentieth century is just a measure of the variability on a dynamic evolving planet?

His conclusions in the article were:

Underpinning the global warming and climate change mantra is the imputation that humans live on a non-dynamic planet. On all scales of observation and measurement, sea level and climate are not constant. Change is normal and is driven by a large number of natural forces. Change can be slow or very fast. However, we see political slogans such as Stop Climate Change or government publications such as Living with Climate Change, demonstrating that both the community and government believe that climate variability and change are not normal. By using the past as the key to the present, we are facing the next inevitable glaciation, yet the climate, economic, political and social models of today assess the impact of a very slight warming and do not evaluate the higher risk of yet another glaciation. Geology, archaeology and history show that during glaciation, famine, war, depopulation and extinction are the norm.

What a future we look forward to in this debate. I have been disappointed by the member for Grayndler and also the member for Kingsford Smith. Why am I disappointed? Because they refer to articles in newspapers across the globe but fail to address one in one of Australia’s major newspapers, the Herald-Sun, today from our good friend Andrew Bolt. I am not close to Andrew Bolt and sometimes I have an opposite opinion to him but today he outlines 10 of his own inconvenient truths and asks for judgement, yet neither the member for Grayndler nor the member for Kingsford Smith came in here and were prepared to address these reasoned criticisms of the movie by Al Gore.

Why do you just come into this House with the arguments you came in with last time? I have to say to the member for Kingsford Smith that it was probably his best address I have seen him make in the House. He is obviously getting more comfortable in this place. He is obviously passionate about what he is talking about. I can understand the position he comes from. His consistency is like the religious fervour of a Bible-bashing priest in the far south of America.

But I get disappointed that you cannot see any argument whatsoever for a reasoned debate—nothing. It is like everybody that might have some consideration, like the Prime Minister who in his statement this week said: ‘Look, the science is out there. We’re addressing those. We’ve done all these things, as outlined by the parliamentary secretary.’ All of those things are outlined but there is no real debate on the issues. The member for Grayndler and the member for Kingsford Smith have just dismissed anybody who has a view on climate change that is contrary to theirs. I would like to be part of the debate. The member for Kingsford Smith did not offer anything today, nothing new—nothing, nought, nada. All he did was present again the same policies that would devastate—

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