Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I have not; a colleague of mine may have asked about this. If that is the case that is good, but I just wonder whether the government is going to provide an official statement or document in relation to what has now become known as ‘Climate-gate’, where clearly the information has been doctored or, to use that terrible term, ‘sexed up’. I said ‘clearly’ but I should have said that that is the allegation. The allegation is that that has occurred. That allegation has now been in the community for some two to three weeks. I still have not seen an official government position being put out in relation to that by way of a document indicating whether the allegations are true or not. It would seem, given the response of the academics involved, that they have been unable to deny the truthfulness of the email exchanges and that there is an absence of the raw data which would enable people to rework their calculations. That must be a matter of considerable concern.

There are now allegations that something similar may have happened in New Zealand. And we do know, albeit in a different vein, that in the CSIRO in Australia Dr Spash has not been allowed to have his article published—although I think he fully accepts the so-called consensus science. But if there are these restrictions being placed on scientists—especially at East Anglia, which is the institution pre-eminently relied upon by the IPCC for its predictions—and if scientific research is found to be wanting then the whole underpinning of the IPCC reports begin to crumble. And if that begins to crumble then the whole approach that humankind may or may not be taking to the issues before us may well have to come in for genuine and general reconsideration.

I think the Australian people are entitled to a full and detailed explanation as to what the government has done to examine whether it is satisfied that Dr Jones, Dr Mann and others have doctored information. It seems to be now relatively agreed that Dr Mann’s so-called hockey-stick graph is no longer to be relied upon by the IPCC because it was debunked by a mathematician-statistician who was able to show that the calculations on it were completely—