Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have told you and you can look it up on your computer. I know you are skilled at this because you always get your riding instructions from the computer in Senate committees. I am a bit like Senator Macdonald; I am a practical person. I will pay my share of the rent when everyone else does. I am not sure whether climate change is real or if it is imagined. I cannot get any direction from the scientists. Half of them say one thing and half of them say another thing. I have lived on the water all my life. I live on a riverside property at Wynnum and I can tell you this: I observe the weather because I have been sailing all my life. Every morning I get up, look at the tide and where it has been, and I cannot see any noticeable change. If the tide was going to go up or the sea was going to rise I would have observed it.

We get all of these catastrophic predictions. A couple of weeks ago the Australian did an article based on tide charts and tide predictors. The change in tides is very minimal—0.05 per cent of a millimetre. I cannot see where the tide is rising, but Senator Milne assures me that it is. I always thought water found its own level. I have sailed on Moreton Bay and the Brisbane River since I was 12 and I cannot see the tide coming in. Neither can the Australian and neither can the people who chart the tides and the sea flow. Yes, it moves a bit—it moves up and it moves down—but apparently everywhere else in the world the tide moves up. It does not move up where I come from. I look at these things and I observe them—and I am a practical person. I have run my own business; I am a practical person. If you listen to Senator Milne, the world is coming to an end, we are all going to drown and I have to sell my riverside property. I am sorry, Senator Milne, but I do not accept that.

Here in Australia—and we are talking about whether or not the fire disasters are natural—the Australian Federal Police are already talking about remote satellite sensing and surveillance to enforce emissions trading. Yet will those same standards on climate change be enforced overseas by developing countries that spend Australia’s dollars? Senator Milne and I have been spectacularly unsuccessful trying to find out what it is going to cost the Australian people to fund the underdeveloped countries. But at least if we are going to pin our people down on fires—whether they are caused by lighting strikes, or are man-made or however they come about—by putting in surveillances, how are we going to know what caused the fires in some of the counties that we give a financial leg up to and how much CO2 is going to go into the air? This is another practical implication. We are putting all this sensing gear in and no-one knows what anyone else is going to do. Is the rest of the world going to follow this? Is the rest of the world going to do all these things or are we just going to pour money into overseas countries and not get a return for it?

When you can explain all these things, Senator Wong, you might get some of the people to back you. But you have been spectacularly unsuccessful in convincing the Australian population that they are going to get value for their buck. I think most of the Australian people would be practical: ‘If the rest of the world is going to do this, yes, put me down for my share.’ But no-one is prepared to carry the debt for the rest of the world. You would say: ‘Yes, the rest of the world has done things. China has given us a target and India has given us a target.’ They have given you a press release—that is what they have given you. You have taken it up lock, stock and barrel. When I see some legislation put down or some commitment to write legislation then I will say that you have achieved something. All you have achieved is getting a press release from China and India. President Obama is going to make minimal cuts. But I talked to them over there and they said there was no chance of getting this up. Next year is an election year and they will not put it up. There is a lot of opposition to it. You are going out there trying to lead the rest of the world. We are not convinced that you are going to achieve anything and therefore we are pretty worried about it.