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

I would like to give a shout-out to those in my electorate that work in the aviation industry and at Sydney Airport—the pilots and the crews; the ground staff; the baggage handlers; the transport operators; the taxi drivers; the Customs officials; the border protection staff; all those who work in the air freight industry and those who rely on the air freight industry for their imports and exports; the tourism industry; the hotels; the bed and breakfasts; the restaurants; the cafes; the list goes on and on. But this industry is currently under attack from the climate crazies.

We currently have the concept called 'flight shaming' and we even have an international rock band refusing to fly because of the claims of the damage this important industry does to the world. Bjorn Lomborg has done some calculations. I know you may not like the gentleman, but let's look at his calculations. Currently, there are 40 million commercial flights a year. That's over 100,000 a day. If we took one-third of those flights—we are talking something like 30,000 flights a day—out of the sky and told those people they couldn't travel, if we did that today and kept it up to the year 2100, the calculations are that we would save 0.01 of a degree of warming. That is 100th of one degree by the year 2100. And we have people attacking this industry, to save that.

There are not only economic benefits of international air travel; there are also social benefits. One of the greatest benefits to humanity from an airline industry is the ability of people from different nations and different cultures and with different customs to meet with each other, to play sport against each other, to travel and to interact—the quality of life that people get from exploring overseas countries, from exploring the tourist sites of the world. This is of invaluable worth to the world and it is invaluable to world humanity. We cannot estimate the cost of this, yet we have people attacking it.

I would call on all parliamentarians to try and join new friendship group the Parliamentary Friends of Aviation and Airports to push back against this nonsense and tell those who work in this important industry that we stand with them.