Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

And here we have Senator Cormann! Senator Cormann must have gone up to have a look at Lord Monckton's autograph and he is all fired up and he wants to come after poor me, trying to deal with the scientific facts.

Senator Williams interjecting—

Senator Cormann interjecting—

We have the climate change deniers over there attacking me when I am dealing with the scientific facts. So, anyway, the National Party are doing a great disservice to the bush by being climate change deniers. The CSIRO go on to say:

Development and population growth in Australia’s coastal regions will exacerbate the risks from sea level rise and increase the likely severity and frequency of coastal flooding.

People who have a scientific brain are saying these things, but you can't expect Senator Williams, Senator Joyce, Senator Cormann or the DLP to actually understand these issues, because this is a political exercise for them. It is not a scientific exercise; it is an exercise in political denial. It is an exercise in misinformation. It is an exercise in fear campaigns. That is what the coalition are about.

The CSIRO go on to say our infrastructure is under threat. They say heatwaves, storms and floods will have a direct impact on the health of Australians. They say:

Moderate warming in the absence of rainfall declines can be beneficial to some agricultural crops, and higher levels of carbon dioxide can stimulate plant growth.

We hear this from the opposite side all the time. But the CSIRO say:

However —

you know that word 'however'—

… these positive effects can be offset by changes in temperature, rainfall, pests, and the availability of nutrients. Production from cropping and livestock is projected to decline over much of southern Australia, as is the quality of grain, grape, vegetable, fruit, and other crops.

Senator Williams, you are doing your so-called constituency a great disservice by being a climate change denier, because you are denying the scientific facts. This is not an argument about whether the government's position is more economically responsible than the coalition's position; it is actually a debate between science and the deniers—and the deniers are in control in the coalition. Malcolm Turnbull actually knows the real position. I will come to Malcolm Turnbull in a minute. On the science, where is the document The science of climate change: questions and answers from? It is certainly not from the coalition. It is from the Australian Academy of Science. They explain climate change. They explain how the earth's climate has changed in the past and how it has changed in the recent past. They say unequivocally that human activities are causing climate change. They list the causes, similarly to the CSIRO. Then they ask the question of how we deal with the uncertainty of some of the science. They say this:

Although climate forecasts are uncertain and will remain so, the broad conclusions of climate change science as outlined above—

And I hope that the DLP are listening—

are based on many lines of evidence that together give a high degree of confidence. Partly because of scientific uncertainty but also because many aspects of human life are involved, decisions about action on climate change will need to involve extensive consideration of issues beyond science, including ethics, economics and risk management.

I have heard people argue that it is the sun that is doing it. NASA, who have more information and understanding about the sun than anybody else on the planet, do not agree with that proposition. I suppose that the NASA scientists are part of the climate science communist collusion against democracy—NASA. What NASA says is that the Arctic sea ice minimum has declined 11.5 per cent in this decade, that carbon dioxide is now 391 parts per million, that sea level is increasing by 3.27 millimetres a year, that global temperature has gone up 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit on average since 1880 and that Greenland's land ice is reducing by 100 billion tonnes per year.

That is the science of the issue. We now have to deal with the politics. And the politics are underpinned on the other side by a lack of scientific understanding, a lack of scientific acceptance and attacks on our scientists. They are the cheerleaders for Alan Jones against people like Professor Karoly. Actually, I am not sure who is cheering who on. Why do they have this position? If you look at why they are doing this, they do not accept the science. They want to back in their big business backers in the mining industry. They want to back in the billionaires, such as Twiggy Forrest. They want to back in all those people who are opposing this because it might affect their profits. It is about time that those on the other side stood up for the Australian nation against the billionaire miners in this country. It is about time that they stood up for their constituency, because that constituency will be harmed. But what they are doing is simply relying on the donations flowing in from the billionaire miners and because of that they are taking a position against the national interest in support of the billionaire miners.

I have gone through some of the issues. But there is at least one—and there is more than that; we know that—coalition MP who knows the real truth here. Who is that? Malcolm Turnbull, who you all hailed as the most economically literate leader that you had ever had—back when he was your leader. But after he was knifed by the right wing—the extremists of the party—he suddenly became not economically literate. But he does have some economic literacy. I do not agree with everything that he says, but I agree with what he said about direct action, which is your supposed policy. He said that it was a recipe for fiscal recklessness. And you dare to come here and lecture us about fiscal responsibility when the most competent economic analyst on your side, Malcolm Turnbull, has got you pegged. He said that the chief advantage of the opposition's direct action policy is that it is easy to stop if you do not believe in preventing climate change. You do not believe in it.

What the government has done is take the challenge up. We are making sure that the polluters pay and not the community. You have a $70 billion black hole that you are trying to cover up. And one of the things that you are going to try and do is get rid of the department of climate change. You will want to get rid of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology next. You are an absolute disgrace. Short-term politics are driving you and the national interest has dropped to second best. You are a disgrace. You are a rabble. You will fall apart and be exposed. And I hope to be there exposing you all the way down the line. (Time expired)