Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The most exciting thing I heard in Senator Milne's speech is the guarantee that the election in 2016 will be on a carbon tax. Nothing has been sweeter music to my ears than to hear that. I hope the Labor Party will again follow their Greens colleagues in making this the issue in the 2016 election. I can assure senators that the Australian people will give it the same result as they gave it in the 2013 election.

I want to start, while Senator Milne is here, by talking about the global warming that we have heard about so often in her speeches and in this parliament from the Greens and the Labor Party over the years. I quote from an article:

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

That was in 2012.

This means that the 'plateau' or 'pause' in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

Is this Ian Macdonald saying this or some ratbag scientist that is vilified by the Greens? No, sorry. This is the United Kingdom Met Office. They say:

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.

I suppose Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America's prestigious Georgia tech university, will be one that the Greens and the Labor Party will say is not a real scientist, but from all research she seems to be a very real scientist to me. She told this newspaper that it was clear:

… computer models used to predict future warming were 'deeply flawed'.

Senator Milne quoted the United Kingdom government. I understand that the new energy minister—or not quite so new now—promised:

The high-flown theories of bourgeois left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport—energy policies, you might say, for many, not the few.

Of course, that statement by the UK government bought fury from all those fearing reductions in huge subsidies given to wind farms.

I spoke earlier tonight on a related matter before the Senate. I quoted from an article in The Weekend Australian entitled 'Coral comes back from the dead'. It is an interesting article. I recommend that Senator Milne and her colleagues in the Greens have a read of it. I will quote one passage from this article and invite senators to have a look at the rest. The research was done by a Dr Gilmour. The report says:

Gilmour's boss at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, research director Jamie Oliver, concedes there's still no way of knowing whether powerful cyclones have struck before in clusters. 'I think all we can do at this point is say we are seeing a decline in the reef, and we are seeing that cyclones are playing a major role in that decline but we don't know for sure whether it has been as a result of human activities.'

If you listen to the Greens and the Labor Party, Dr Oliver would be pilloried as a climate change sceptic, simply because he says, as I say and as most sensible people say, the science is not settled. I do not know what Senator Milne thinks of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. I think it is a pretty good organisation. It is just one of many organisations, like the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, who say it is not quite as settled as some would have you believe. I said earlier that there is so much research done into trying to justify the Greens and Labor Party's view on climate change and, if you did not have that view—if you happened to be a scientist that had a different view—you would be pilloried. I mentioned many times Professor Bob Carter as being one that the Greens also pillory, but he is as well qualified as others who have a different view. I know, and I do not think I am giving away any confidences by saying, that he knows that he will never, under a Labor government, get any money for any research that is different to what the Labor government wants the results to be.

I mentioned an answer to a question on notice way back in 2009. I will have to get it updated. Over pages and pages it lists hundreds and hundreds of grants—grants of $250,000, $563,000, $255,000. There are pages and pages of them. All the grant money, all the research money, was going to those who would promote the Labor and Greens view on climate change. If you did not have that view, you got no research money. That is the way this whole debate has occurred in Australia.

I want those in the Labor Party to answer this one question: if the carbon tax is such a good thing, why is it that your leader, prior to the 2010 election, promised that there would never be a carbon tax under a government she led?