Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure if we have just seen Bob the senator or Bob the historian or Bob the blogger but I do congratulate my new colleague on his first speech. I note with some interest the content of Senator Bob Carr's speech in relation to the environment and I have a question for him: as premier, would he have gone to the people of New South Wales two days before an election and told them a complete untruth on what he was going to do about such an important policy as a carbon tax?

Because I remind Senator Bob Carr that two days before the last election the person who prevailed upon him to come into this place was indeed the very person who told the great lie of Australian politics in the last century, and that was: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I ask Senator Bob Carr: would he have gone to the New South Wales people and told a complete untruth? That is what I would like to hear from Senator Carr when he makes his next speech.

I would like to refer Senator Bob Carr to an article in the Australian in February of this year written by Graham Lloyd, the environment editor. I will just read it because, with the greatest respect to the new senator, I did not think his Chicken Little approach to what lies ahead was a constructive debate in relation to where we will be in the next 10, 20 or 50 years. Graham Lloyd, the environment editor, said:

Himalayan glaciers are back on the frontline of climate change controversy, with new research showing the world's greatest snowcapped peaks lost no ice at all over the past 10 years.

Claims the Himalayan ice peaks would disappear by 2035 instead of 2350 cast doubt over the credibility of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2009 report. Now even the 2350 estimate of disappearing ice is open to question.

Research published in the scientific journal Nature showed satellite measurements of the ice peaks from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan have come to an unexpected conclusion.

While lower-altitude glaciers were melting over the past eight years, enough snow was being added …

…   …   …

In 2010, the head of the IPCC was forced to apologise for including in a 2007 report the claim that there was a 'very high' chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded in January 2010 that 'the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly' when the claim was included.

I do want to talk about some other matters. One is that in 2012 we mark the 70th anniversary of a number of matters that were an indication of the darkest of days in 1942 and the challenges facing this nation. Without an exhaustive list, of course I note the fall of Singapore; the bombing of Darwin—and Natasha Griggs from the other place, the member for Solomon, is responsible for a motion, accepted by both chambers in the end, that we recognise the bombing of Darwin, and full marks to her; the battles of Sunda Strait and Bantam Bay and the sinking of HMAS Perth; the bombing of Broome and Wyndham; HMAS Yarra, sunk off Java; the battle of Java itself; the battle of the Coral Sea; attacks on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines; the Queen unveiling Bomber Command Memorial in London this year on 28 June; the sinking of the Montevideo Maru; the battle of the Kokoda Track in New Guinea; the battle of Milne Bay in New Guinea; the battle of El Alamein in Egypt; and of course there are others. This is a moment and a year of solemn reflection for this country.

I want to talk about another matter that relates to a function I attended with the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Tony Abbott, in Bendigo on 5 March. There the Leader of the Opposition in writing again pledged the coalition to address the DFRDB and the DFRB indexation matter. Again, the Leader of the Opposition has set in stone the commitment of the coalition to address the wrongs that should have been righted many years ago—and I acknowledge it should have been righted by the former government. But I am not here to debate what happened before; I am here to debate and talk about what we need to do now. This chamber should be ashamed that on 16 June last year when the opportunity was there to address this issue of the fair indexation of this superannuation, which we all know is a wrong that should be righted, the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and Senator Xenophon voted it down.