Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Parramatta for her question. The fact is that climate change is real and we know this because our scientific community, particularly climate scientists, have a consensus about it. An open letter from the scientific community in June of this year said:

The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.

There is a context in which we should understand what our scientists are telling us. The fact is that science underpins the quality of life that we have in Australia. In 2011-12 the Commonwealth will invest an estimated $9.4 billion in science, research and innovation through programs across the Australian government—some 43 per cent higher than the high-water mark, so called, of the Howard government. There are 55,000 researchers working in Australia's univer­sities and tens of thousands of researchers working in CSIRO, the public service and cultural institutions in the not-for-profit sector.

Scientific knowledge starts at school and of course as education minister I do know that many of our best and brightest started learning about science when they were at school. Australia's record in science is a proud one. I think of the Tidbinbilla deep space tracking station, quite close to us here in Parliament House, and great Australian scientists like Howard Florey, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1945 for his discovery of penicillin. There are many, many others. Scientists lead the research that drives a modern economy; scientists lead the fight against disease; scientists are immunising our children, fighting cancer and looking into space—and the same body of people is telling us, using the same scientific methods, that climate change is real and we must take action. Sir Gustav Nossal, made Australian of the Year in 2000 for his pioneering work in immunology, is highly respected amongst the global scientific community and he told the Sydney Morning Herald last month:

I believe global warming is real. Action has to start now, if not the day before yesterday, for the simple reason that the effects are so long-lasting and so dire that they will linger well into the future.

Regrettably members opposite do not share the views of the scientific community. Senator Bernardi says:

Quite simply, the concept that there is a consensus on the science is one of many fabrications undertaken by the alarmists that has now been debunked.

The Leader of The Nationals in the Senate has said:

I never believed the science is settled. If the science was settled, Copernicus would be dead.

The Leader of the Opposition himself has said that the argument on climate change is absolute crap.

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