Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

It is an outrageous proposition indeed, Senator Mason. But the most amazing thing of all—and you will like this, Madam Deputy President Cash—involves the Independent Climate Sceptics, who have drawn column A on the Legislative Council ballot paper. The material from the Independent Climate Sceptics makes it pretty clear that they believe that an emissions trading scheme will never, ever prevent climate change; that extra CO2 makes the earth greener, with extra plant growth; that climate change is natural and warmer periods occur without human CO2 emissions being the cause; that CO2 increases rarely correlate with the earth’s temperature rising and that any correlation is therefore incidental; and that the alarmist theories propounded by the IPCC and other political bodies are crippled by huge uncertainties. Not only are they the mob that are preferencing the Labor Party ahead of the Liberal Party but—wait for it!—the Labor Party is preferencing the Independent Climate Sceptics ahead of not just the Liberal Party but the Save RAH Party. So a group of doctors with whom you might disagree on policy but who care about our health system and are campaigning on that are less worthy of Labor Party preferences than the Independent Climate Sceptics. This is the party that Senator Wong used to be the state president of.