Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I support the motion and I congratulate the member for Mallee for his perseverance with this particular issue. Nearly four years ago the member for Mallee, and the balance of the committee that I was on—the AFFA committee—moved a motion that the government put in place a cooperative research centre on climate. Four years have moved on and we have done very little in that regard, other than recognise that the climate is changing. Even the Prime Minister last October had a conversion on the road to Damascus and recognised that climate change is a very real phenomenon.

Climate change in Australia has been a real phenomenon for many years. When people suggest, as some do, that cloud seeding would be interfering with God’s law, I would suggest, as the member for Mallee has done previously, that we have interfered with God’s law in the past quite dramatically. One of the reasons that we are suffering from a lack of rainfall in some areas in Australia is due to the pollution that human beings have caused.

One of the things that cloud seeding is attempting to do—and I know the member for Mallee is well aware of this—is overcome the adverse impacts that pollution has had in terms of rainfall droplets and the formation of rain and, when suitable circumstances do arise, encourage more rain through the artificial insemination of clouds. As you would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker—because I think you were the minister in the New South Wales government when a trial was carried out—

See this speech in context