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

I heard Senator Kim Carr today describe the coalition as knuckle draggers. I must say, what a performance of knuckle dragging from Senator Cormann, Senator Williams and Senator Scullion. When people have a look at the Hansard in years to come and they do an analysis of Australia's response to this terrible, terrible problem of carbon pollution in the atmosphere, they can look at those three contributions and say: 'What a bunch of knuckle draggers the coalition were.' The skin has all gone, they are through to the bone and they are still dragging their knuckles on this very important issue.

But they have not always been like that. It has only been since the extremists in the coalition took over. There was a group of coalition MPs—even, if I have to say so myself, up to the former Prime Minister John Howard—who recognised that climate change had to be dealt with because of the danger it posed to the future of this globe, to the extent that on 10 December 2006 Prime Minister John Howard announced a joint government business task force. It was known as the Shergold inquiry. The Shergold inquiry came up with a number of unchallengeable propositions that had to be dealt with. Remember, this was an inquiry established by John Howard. That is when the coalition determined they would have to put a price on carbon.

I will go through a couple of quotes from the Shergold report. It says:

Australia has a vital interest in the form of any emerging global response. Given our exposure to the impacts of climate change we want an approach that is effective.

It then goes on to say:

However, waiting until a truly global response emerges before imposing an emissions cap will place costs on Australia by increasing business uncertainty and delaying or losing investment. Already there is evidence that investment in key emissions-intensive industries and energy infrastructure is being deferred.

After careful consideration, the Task Group has concluded that Australia should not wait until a genuinely global agreement has been negotiated. It believes that there are benefits, which outweigh the costs, in early adoption by Australia of an appropriate emissions constraint. Such action would enhance investment certainty and provide a long-term platform for responding to carbon constraints.

There is much more I could go to in the Shergold report. All of this was done under a coalition government and there was an emerging political consensus that we had to deal with global warming.

Then came the current Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, who then described himself as the weathervane for the coalition—one minute a climate change denier, the next minute saying something had to be done on climate change. Whatever the Australian or the Murdoch press were saying about climate change, that is where you would find Tony Abbott. And then Tony Abbott linked up with all the climate change sceptics and shared a stage with Viscount Monckton, the climate change sceptic in chief. No scientist of any standing places any confidence or any credibility in Lord Monckton. But what do the extremists in the coalition do? They line up with Lord Monckton and Gina Rinehart. They help sponsor Lord Monckton to come here to run all his climate change nonsense.

This motion before us talks about the cost of living, the cost of doing business and competitive international issues. Extremists do not care about that. This is a cover for those in the coalition who refuse to accept that climate change is real and that it has to be dealt with. They are prepared to back their big business mates so that there is no cost on the polluters in this country—and it is typical of the coalition to be doing the bidding of big business—and to try to ensure that everyone else in the community accepts the cost of climate change but not big business. Big business are looking at the short term on this. They are not looking at the long term.

I am looking at the long term and the Labor Party is looking at the long term. I am looking at the long term because I have two beautiful grandchildren—six and four years old. I want to leave them an environment in which they can have the same benefits that we have had over the years. That means that the economies that have taken advantage of being able to pour uninhibited amounts of carbon into the atmosphere need to take the lead. As John Howard himself said, we need to take the lead. But the extremists are in control in the coalition and the lead will not be taken by them.

I get pretty angry, I must say, when I hear the knuckle-dragging speeches from the coalition claiming that this is about economics when it is about the future of the planet. It is about the future for my grandkids and it is about the future for kids around this country. If we simply take the knuckle-dragging line of the coalition then we will ignore doing the right thing. We will ignore the coalition's Shergold inquiry. We will ignore what John Howard has said, which is that we should deal with this. We will ignore the scientific community in this country if we refuse to do something about global warming. That is the issue that we have to face. The coalition are controlled by the extremists. The Lord Monckton cheer squad and knuckle draggers over in the coalition are in absolute control.

They just refuse to accept the science. I have so many pieces of scientific literature here. I have Climate change: science and solutions for Australiaby CSIRO. This is our scientists telling us what the problem is. I would say to the knuckle draggers, 'Read this and then tell anyone that we should not be putting a price on carbon, tell anybody that they should ignore the scientists and the CSIRO.' They say that there will be huge ecological and health impacts from not dealing with climate change.

CSIRO have written another one called the State of the climate—2012. Why don't you read that? Why don't you listen to the Climate Commission when they outline all of the literature on climate change? Why don't you take note of our scientists in The Copenhagen diagnosis, where the leading scientists from across Australia say that we must do something about climate change? They are saying that there are surging greenhouse gas emissions around the world, that the recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming, that there is an acceleration of the melting of ice sheets, glaciers and ice caps, that there is rapid Arctic sea ice decline, that the current sea level rise is underestimated, that the sea level predictions have to be revised upwards, that any delay in action risks irreversible damage and that the turning point must come soon.

The coalition do not listen to CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology or the credible scientists in every university in this country. Instead, they listen to Lord Monckton and Gina Rinehart and do their bidding and get their advice. I would rather listen to the advice of our scientists than that absolute fraud Lord Monckton any day. For the Leader of the Opposition to be sitting down with Lord Monckton, railing against climate change action, shows how the extremists have got absolute control.

We heard Senator Williams talk today about socialists. Lord Monckton talks about the communists having control of this debate. This is a guy who says he is a member of the House of Lords when he is not, who says he is a Nobel laureate, which he is not, who claims to have single-handedly won the Falklands War and who says he has invented a cure for Graves' disease. This is the guy who the Leader of the Opposition cohabitates with in the climate change debate. He is not someone who can be taken seriously. He calls young demonstrators against his climate change scepticism 'the Hitler Youth marching in and breaking up meetings'. These are the types of people the Leader of the Opposition sits down with and tries to treat credibly. Senator Williams talks about the socialist takeover and about the Pew foundation and Greenpeace trying to close Australia down.

I do not know what the opposition think about NASA. I do not think NASA is inhabited by communists. I do not think NASA is inhabited by the Socialist Left in America. I do not think NASA can be seen to be some loony left-wing group. But NASA says that the climate has changed. All you have to do is go onto its website and have a look at what it says. We get arguments about the cost. My colleagues who presented here before, Senator Faulkner and Senator Singh, have gone over the issues. I will not go over them again; I want to concentrate on the issue of the science. If you do not agree with the science, the knuckle-dragging analysis from the coalition becomes a reality for them. You have to listen to our scientists; you have to understand the science.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States is clearly one of the leaders in science. It says there are certain facts about the earth's climate that are not in dispute. It says:

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.

It says:

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth's climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth's orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels.

It goes on to say that there is a global temperature rise. It says:

All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 ...

NASA says the oceans are warming; the top 700 metres has increased by 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969. It says:

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006 ...

There is declining Arctic sea ice. There is glacial retreat; the glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies, Alaska and Africa are in retreat. And there is ocean acidification. So the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA—every one of the experts in the field—say you have to deal with this issue. Yet the coalition are denying that there is change. We heard the contribution of Senator Williams earlier. He said, 'Yes, I accept there is climate change' and then went on to try to justify it as a natural phenomenon of the Earth. He did not deal with the issue of CO2 emissions. He did not deal with any of those issues, which are so important.

What are NASA doing? As I said, you cannot say that they are the communist underbelly of the United States. NASA are out there with an education program for schoolkids. I would like to send Senator Joyce, Senator Williams and a few of the coalition knuckle draggers along to one of these NASA education programs. We should all pass a resolution that we pay for them to go to the NASA education program. The grade 5 to 8 program would be enough. They would not have to go to the high science; just send them to the kiddies science training that NASA does.