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

I could pause my speech and find the calculator, but you can do that, Senator Ludlam. You perhaps do not have much else to do at the moment. Perhaps one of the smaller benefits of abolishing the Climate Change Authority is that there will be an $8 million saving to the Australian taxpayer.

What was that particular body supposed to do? Was it supposed to give advice on climate change, on climate and on matters related thereto? It may have escaped the attention of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens that we actually have a very highly regarded Bureau of Meteorology that is very capable of giving any government advice that it might need in relation to climate change matters. We also have the highly regarded and highly respected CSIRO that has very good independent people who are able to give the government advice should the government need it. So why did we then set up another body? Apart from giving some Labor-Greens fellow travellers a job on the board, apart from setting up yet another bureaucracy in this town and leaving the Australian taxpayer to pay for it, I cannot see any reason we needed a Climate Change Authority. I suspect that I—and if it were not I it was certainly others from my side of the parliament—said that when this authority was established under the Labor-Greens regime in government.

If it were doing its job and did not have this obvious left-wing bent, what I would like the Climate Change Authority to tell me is: how is what we do in Australia, where we emit less than 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon, going to impact on the climate of the world? I keep asking that in this chamber. It is not a new question. In the long time we have been debating these matters, nobody has ever been able to give me an answer to that. Remember, it is not as if the Labor Party's carbon tax were going to stop the 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon. It was only intended to stop five per cent of Australia's 1.4 per cent. If you calculate that down, the absolutely infinitesimal impact that such an action would have on the climate of the world is very obvious. In the debate this morning, the minister kindly gave me figures. I did not write them down. Approximately, he indicated figures such as: China emitted 23 per cent, the United States emitted 19 per cent, the European Union emitted 13 per cent and Australia emitted 1.4 per cent. And yet, if you listen to Senator Milne and the Greens political party, all of the cyclones, all of the floods and all of the natural calamities throughout the world are caused by Australia's emission of 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, and under Labor and the Greens we were going to reduce that by five per cent.

You can see the stupidity of the argument and you can see the hypocrisy of the Labor Party and the Greens on this issue. I was recently alerted to some comments by a retired English politician, Lord Deben. I thank Senator Singh for very cleverly pointing out to me that I was pronouncing his name wrongly previously. This member of the august House of Lords, an unelected body in the United Kingdom, suddenly appeared in Australia a couple of days ago and was roundly critical of the Abbott government because it was trying to get rid of Australia's carbon tax. I wonder why Lord Deben did not make a comment about his own country and the European Union, of which the United Kingdom is part. He did not seem to worry about the 11 or 12 per cent of emissions from his own country, but he thought Australia's emission of 1.4 per cent, which the Labor Party was trying to cease by five per cent, was suddenly a huge issue. Of course, when you have a look at Lord Deben's background you will see that he is chairman of a consortium of some of the biggest wind development companies in the world. He also has a couple of other interests in that particular area. I read on Google that, for just one of his board positions, he was getting something like 35,000 pounds of English taxpayers' money. I do not attribute bad motives to Lord Deben, but it does raise the question of whether his interest is more than just his alleged interest in climate change.

There is another question I have asked the Greens and the Labor Party on every occasion I have spoken. It has been many times over many years, but never once has anyone attempted to explain this to me. Once upon a time, the world was covered in ice. Once upon a time, the centre of Australia was a rainforest. Once upon a time, there was an inland sea in Australia. All of those things changed. I am the first to agree that the climate does change. My opponents opposite call me a climate change denier. It is typical; they never let the truth get in the way. I accept climate change; I always have done. The climate has clearly changed, because if it had not we would still be covered in ice and snow. Clearly, it has changed. But is it man's emissions of carbon since the 1850s that has caused that?