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

I will not keep the Senate long, because we do have a program to get through, but it is important, as Senator Carr says, that answers be given. I remember in the previous Labor government I waited for about three years for an answer to a question on notice and never even got it before the Labor Party was so unceremoniously tossed out.

It is important, as Senator Carr says, that answers be given, and I am sure that they are coming. But I just cannot let Senator Carr's rantings go unchallenged. The CSIRO, which is a magnificent scientific organisation, is not sacking staff; it is reallocating staff from one area of its duties to another area. I am pleased to say that the CSIRO is doing a lot of work in northern Australia, and rightly so. It is very good work, and it does provide a scientific base for the work of governments and others.

But what Senator Carr complains about is that the CSIRO is now no longer concentrating a lot of scientific effort on the cause of climate change because, as Senator Carr and his mates in the Greens political party have said, the science of climate change is settled. If I have heard that once from Senator Carr, I have heard it a hundred times. Senator Carr keeps telling us: 'The science is settled.' So why was the CSIRO putting such an effort into the science of climate change? What CSIRO is doing is putting more effort now into the science of resilience and remediation—into dealing with the impacts of a climate which, we all can see, has been changing. And it has been changing, I have to say, for thousands of years. What the CSIRO is—in my view, rightly—doing is saying: 'Let's direct some of our expertise into the area of what we do about the changing climate.' For some reason, Senator Carr does not like that. But to me and, I suggest, to most Australians, that seems to be a reasonable use of the taxpayers' resources in funding scientific effort in the CSIRO.