Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 28 February in question time Minister Combet spent some time paying out the Leader of the Opposition when he said that in November 2009 the Leader of the Opposition had said that in the northern part of Britain, up against Hadrian’s Wall, grapes had been grown, that in medieval times crops had been grown in Greenland and that even in the 1700s they had had ice fairs on the Thames. The minister suggested that the only authority for that was One Nation. Clearly I am better read on this than the minister. When the minister was referring to Google that day, maybe he should have done a little bit of googling as well, because the InfoBritain website currently says:

In Roman Britain the weather was warmer than it is now, and by 1086 when the Domesday survey was carried out there were thirty nine vineyards officially recorded in England, although the actual figure may have been much higher. Temperatures began to drop in the second half of the sixteenth century causing a retreat of vine growing from the north and east of Europe.

Historical artefacts throughout Britain have pointed to locally grown wine, which was grown throughout the Roman occupation because, as is consistently reported throughout all sources, it was warmer then than it is now.

The Thames frost fairs are referred to in many historical records as well, and English artist Thomas Wyke painted a picture of the 1683-84 frost fair when the Thames was frozen for two months. Publications include Appleby’s 1980 Epidemics and Famine in the Little Ice Age and Gordon Manley’s 1975 work called 1684: The Coldest Winter in the English Instrumental Record. There are plenty of records and it is all on open source.

Finally, on the matter of crops being grown in Greenland in the medieval period: again, this is well known to anyone interested in finding out the facts. I cannot believe that even the Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson shows that the minister is poorly informed: it states that the Vikings grew barley in the 11th, 12th and parts of the 13th century when it was warmer than it is now. God forbid should I ever stand here and have my words refuted by a cookbook, but it has happened to the minister.

If the minister had googled this information or looked at Wikipedia or any other internet source, he would have found hundreds of sources that back up what the Leader of the Opposition said. My summary is that either the minister is so poorly read that we should all question whether he is fit to hold this portfolio or whether the department is so woefully inadequate in the most basic research capacities that they cannot be relied upon to do their job. What worries me is that one day soon possibly the minister and his department may have control of a lot of money and that this pathetic failure on this matter is indicative of a glacier of failures that this government stands by. The Prime Minister should bring this carbon issue to an election. (Time expired)

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