Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That this House expresses full confidence in the work of Australia's science community and confirms that it believes that man-made climate change is not a conspiracy or a con, but a real and serious threat to Australia if left unaddressed.

Yesterday was a significant step forward. We finally have on the record both party leaders in this chamber in a bipartisan way expressing full confidence in the science community of Australia and their accepted advice on man-made climate change. At times it has been like pulling teeth—and I fully respect that, within the ranks of both major parties there are differing views—but it is important, if we are going to establish certainty for the future of policy and an economic debate that hangs off those foundations of acceptance of the very best advice from the very best scientists in this country, that this House, regardless of who has the government benches, accepts with confidence the advice that man-made climate change is real.

Both party leaders yesterday confirmed their belief in man-made climate change science. But I do raise with some hesitation some taunts that were made during events of yesterday from colleagues around me. When I did raise the opportunity for both leaders to answer the question around the science, two different members threw up the words, 'Ask us when we are in government!' and 'Wait and see when we are in government!' I hope that is not the position held by colleagues in this chamber. I hope that everyone is being fair dinkum about their belief in the science and the science community, their agreements around the minimum targets that have been agreed upon by 2020 and that everyone is being fair dinkum about the different views on economic responses that are coming forward.

Personally, I am sick of public servants and science being picked on, denied and accused, often when they are not in positions to defend themselves—and all for political expediency. Most, if not all, the people in the science community are lifelong committed scientists doing the very best they can in the most objective way they can and falling wherever the facts and the evidence take them. It is not the role of any of us to accuse them of cons or conspiracies but to accept the advice from the vast majority of scientists—the very best we have in the field—and to listen to it, so that when they say, 'Australia, we have a problem,' we should listen very closely to that and then respond.

In my view, we have spent way too much time pretending that the science of climate change is in dispute. We have spent way too much time pretending that the science of climate change is not bipartisan. As we saw clearly in this chamber yesterday in the middle of question time, the Prime Minister and the alternate Prime Minister reached bipartisan agreement on the climate science. By all means, we are going to have a wrestle over economic policy and the response, but there is bipartisanship on the science itself.

So, for anyone wanting to vote sceptically at the ballot box in four months time, I think there is only one option, and that would be the party of my friend next to me—if he were here, my imaginary friend—Bob Katter's Australia Party.

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