Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Meteorology Amendment (Online Advertising) Bill 2014. This amendment confirms the power of the director of meteorology to accept paid advertising and will require that the director develop and publish guidelines on the type of advertising that the bureau will display, allowing the director to prohibit advertising that is considered not to be in the Commonwealth or the bureau's interest.

The bureau actually first trialled advertising on their website for 12 months in 2012-13. It became a permanent measure in 2013. So this is not something new; it is just confirming the director's powers. It also should be noted that there was a challenge by Fairfax Media to the ACCC, and the Government Solicitor advised the bureau that refusal to carry any online advertising of the Weather Company did not contravene section 86 of the Competition and Consumer Act.

When it comes to our Bureau of Meteorology, we should think of the father of meteorology in Australia. A gentleman named Watkin Tench came to Australia on the First Fleet and with him he brought some thermometers. With Lieutenant William Dawes, he set up an observatory right under what are today the pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge. You think back to that year of 1788, when they came out to the unknown Australian continent. The concern for the science that these great men had in accurately recording the weather and all the meteorological observations of the time was truly amazing and we owe great credit to them.

One thing that Dawes and Watkin Tench noticed was the extreme heat of February 1791. One of the hottest days ever recorded in Sydney was back in 1791. In fact, on that day the temperature hit 109 degrees Fahrenheit, or 42.8 degrees Celsius. Tench wrote in his journal, over 200 years ago:

It felt like the blast of a heated oven.

He also wrote:

But even this heat was judged far to be exceeded in the latter end of the following February, when the north-west wind again set in, and blew with great violence for three days. At Sydney, [the temperature] fell short by one degree of what I have just recorded—

which was 109 degrees Fahrenheit—

but at Rosehill—

modern-day Parramatta—

it was allowed, by every person, to surpass all that they had before felt, either there or in any other part of the world. Unluckily they had no thermometer to ascertain its precise height.

They also noticed the effect of the heat at that time on the wildlife. He wrote in his diary, in February 1791:

An immense flight of bats driven before the wind, covered all the trees around the settlement, whence they every moment dropped dead or in a dying state, unable longer to endure the burning state of the atmosphere. Nor did the perroquettes

which is the old term for parrots—

though tropical birds, bear it better. The ground was strewn with them in the same condition as the bats.

Governor Philip also noted the heat on an extreme day. He said:

… from the numbers [of dead bats] that fell into the brook at Rose Hill—

modern-day Parramatta—

the water was tainted for several days, and it was supposed that more than twenty thousand of them were seen within the space of one mile.

We have the work of the great settlers of this country to help us understand some of our climatic history, and our modern-day weather bureau follows in their footsteps and in their great traditions.

It would be very nice not to have to worry about the government raising a few dollars from advertising, but the fact is that we in this country now need every single cent of government revenue that we can get. Our challenge that we have ahead of us is that we need to come with $1 billion—which is $1,000 million—every single month of the year just to pay the interest on the debt that the previous Labor government ran up in six years. Seventy per cent of that actually flows out of the country, because we borrowed that money from overseas. We have got a pay that interest overseas. That is $12 billion a year.

Right now in the House, they are debating the cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. That is one of the most generous schemes in the world, which enables all Australians to have access to life-saving medicines. That scheme will cost $9.3 billion this year. We are spending more on the interest of the debt than we actually spend to subsidise pharmaceuticals in this country. That is the position we have ourselves in. You know what? We are still borrowing money to pay that interest. One day, sometime in the future, we are going to have to pay that debt back. We as government simply cannot turn our backs on one single cent of revenue, otherwise that is going to harm the most vulnerable people in Australia.

The bureau's website is rather popular. Last year, it had 471 million visits to its website. With the issue of climate change and global warming as one of the most prominent issues in our media, especially as we lead up to the next election, it looks like the issue of the carbon tax will again be the major issue running up to the next election. The next election again looks like it will be a referendum on carbon tax. There will be a lot of interest in what actually happens on the climate and the weather. Where most people go for that information is to our Bureau of Meteorology.

One thing we hear from many people in this House is about how cyclones are increasing and cyclones are getting worse. If they were actually able to inform themselves and go to the bureau's website, they would find that that is a complete furphy. In fact, on the bureau's website, it says:

Trends in tropical cyclone activity in the Australian region (south of the equator; 90–160°E) show that the total number of cyclones appears to have decreased…

This is completely contrary to what we continually hear from members of the opposition and from members of the Greens, which is that cyclones are increasing all the time. Here we have it on the bureau's own website, confirming that the number of cyclones has decreased. That actually print a very neat little graph, although I know the bureau has been rather tardy at keeping the graph up-to-date, and just a quick glance of the eye clearly tells you that cyclones have been on the decrease.

The other issue is global sea ice, which also has information on the bureau's website. We are continually told that the sea ice is melting. Yes, while it may be true that there is a declining trend of sea ice in the Arctic, it is the exact opposite in the Antarctic. In fact, if you add the two together and if you look at the decrease in the Arctic and the increase of sea ice in the Antarctic, the actual global sea ice at the end of June was actually higher than what it has been on average for the last 30 years. On a lot of the myths and furphies that we are hearing, if people like you go to that bureau's website, they can actually find the truth, find the details and not be taken in by the scaremongering.

The other issue is also what will happen with global temperatures. The IPCC have made certain predictions in their computer modelling. We often hear members of this parliament coming in and saying, 'I believe in climate change.' What they are actually saying is that they believe in the IPCC's computer modelling. The test is to measure that theoretical computer modelling against the actual empirical measurements. That is the test. It is not whether you believe in this or you believe in that. We can actually do that test with the Bureau of Meteorology. What that actually shows—even though, yes, there has been warming from around the mid-1970s up until the year 2000—from the year 2000 or from 1997-8 onwards, for the last 16 or 17 years, is that those temperatures have plateaued. That is completely contrary to what the IPCC's computer predictions tell us should happen.

I think no-one can accurately forecast where those temperatures will go in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. There are many respected scientists in the world today that actually predict, due to low sunspot activity, that we will be in for a significant period of global cooling over the next century. I hope they are desperately wrong, just as I hope that those that predict runaway global warming are also desperately wrong. But we need to make sure we are monitoring it accurately. We are looking at the empirical measurements against these predictions so we can make the correct policy decisions in this house. Therefore, I commend this bill to the house.

The other reason I commend it to the house is because of the precedent it sets. If we are able to run effective online advertising and gain government revenue from the Bureau of Meteorology's website, it is a principle that we can extend elsewhere. I would suggest that perhaps the first place we could look is the ABC. We know the ABC at the moment is taking over $1 billion of taxpayers' money net without any revenue coming back to government. Surely if it is good enough for the Bureau of Meteorology to run some online advertising, we should be looking at the success of this and extend that principle to the ABC.

As I said, in the years to come we are going to need every single cent that we can get. We want to finance the NDIS. We want to make sure that we have enough money in the PBS scheme to be able to ensure all Australians have access, as quickly as possible, to the new and wonderful drugs that are coming on stream—drugs to treat all types of cancers and blindness and diabetes. But the only way we can do it is if we run a lean and efficient government. That is why this parliament simply cannot pass up opportunities like this. We need to make sure that every cent that we can get goes into government coffers—firstly, to pay the interest repayments and, secondly, to start paying down the debt so that our kids, our grandkids and our great-grandkids are not inheriting this and are not going to have that debt and those interest repayments strung around their neck in decades to come. I commend the bill to the house.

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