Senate debates
Monday, 30 November 2009
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Customs) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Excise) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — General) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Excise Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Customs Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Amendment (Household Assistance) Bill 2009 [No. 2]
In Committee
10:53 am
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source
With respect, I will be very brief. I just want to get a few things clearly on the record. There you have it: we asked two simple questions about how much, in parts per million, the Australian scheme will reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by. And you saw it: the minister did not answer the question. She did not answer it. I told you that she would then go on to make calamitous statements. And what did she do? Precisely that: she went on through a whole diatribe of calamitous statements.
We asked another simple question on behalf of the Australian people: how much will this reduce the temperature of the globe by? I told you that she would not answer the question. I put the question forward and you all heard it. Of course, she did not answer the question. Ladies and gentlemen, members and senators and whoever is listening out there, that is the course of this debate. Now you are starting to understand how we see it. Now you are starting to understand how the Labor Party just do not answer the questions. All they give you are emotive statements to try, by guile and cunning, to get this massive new tax in place.
The minister then went on to the statements about Garnaut and the proposition of temperatures increasing by six degrees. I am not a scientist. I am not here to discuss that. I listen to scientists. I listen to the balance of opinion. But now we have also seen, from the East Anglia Research Unit—where we have Professor Trembath, Phil Jones and people who are at the very top, who are the grand architects of the papers that determined the IPCC’s approach—their absolute misleading of people. And when John L Daly died in Launceston in 2004 Professor Phil Jones said that he cheered. He cheered that a sceptic had died.
So this is the other side of the debate that I am happy for the scientists to have. But we have put the questions to the minister and the Australian people now have it on the record. Nothing needs to be said except that the minister will not answer the questions.
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