Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to compliment Senator Furner on his contribution, because I think it did address some serious issues about disaster relief and recovery that have taken place in Queensland. It is a distinctly emotive and personal topic to so many of us. But I am disappointed—and I think Senator Macdonald touched upon this after Senator Cameron's exchange—that they dragged out the old chestnut of climate change—the catch-all climate change—which apparently is responsible for every disaster that has befallen the country in the last few years.

I want to put on the record the lack of acknowledgement by this government that the facts around their rhetoric have changed somewhat in recent times. As far as I can recall, the government and the climate change alarmists have claimed the IPCC as the font of all wisdom and so we should heed their warnings, no matter how discredited they have been on many occasions. They also claim that the head of the IPCC, Mr Pachauri, is someone who should be listened to. Well, Mr Pachauri, I think, in Australia last week was reported as saying that they cannot explain why the earth has not warmed over the past 16 or 17 years. It is fact. It has not warmed over the past 17 years. But this is a fact that this government continues to ignore.

You have ministers who are supposedly economically responsible, rational and coherent, although it is hard to associate that with this government. One is Dr Craig Emerson, who flat out refuses to acknowledge the truth of the matter. I am not hypothesising or conjecturing; I am talking about the absolute facts. The problem in this debate is that the government tries to insert a whole range of rhetoric and discussion and their self-evident beliefs into it to support their policy agenda. Quite frankly, the policy agenda they have adopted is flawed, is wrong and is a broken promise in respect of the carbon tax and climate change.

To link climate change so directly with this disaster that has befallen the Queensland people does the government no credit. It is more reflective of the former leader of the Greens Party in this place, Bob Brown, who described the coal miners, who have provided billions of dollars in tax revenue and tens of thousands of jobs, as being responsible for it. The government should not sink any lower than it already has. It does them no credit to blame carbon dioxide for these floods.