Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to respond to Senator Waters's speech in which she claimed the need to declare a climate emergency. She's acting. Her opening statement says it all—'The Greens are moving this motion because the New Zealand government has declared a climate emergency.' That's it! There's no data, no empirical scientific evidence and no scientific reasoning with a framework proving cause and effect, just, 'We're going to do it because the Kiwis have said it.' That's it. That is the summary of climate change in this country and globally.

Then she raised pollution, meaning carbon dioxide as a pollutant. At the same time, she was exhaling 100 times the concentration of pollution of carbon dioxide that she was taking in. This is absurd. She's always exhaling. Does that mean she's always polluting? It's nonsense. I see Senator Sterle laughing, as indeed I know he should be, because this is absurd. Nowhere on this planet, under any government, is carbon dioxide defined as a pollutant. There are no criteria specifying it as a pollutant. It is a misrepresentation instead of data. There is no data, just a false statement. Carbon dioxide, nature's trace gas, is essential for all life on this planet. Senator Waters then went on to talk about 'megafires on a scale never seen before'. False. In the 1930s and the 1970s there were bigger fires, wider fires, and more damage. And then she said the fires were due to a deep drought. That is partially correct. But, in the past, we have had more severe droughts and we have had more severe fires. The fires and the droughts are not due to human use of hydrocarbon fuels. In fact, the drought we've just gone through—and it's still in place in some places—is confirmation, is evidence, that the weather is behaving naturally. There is natural variation. And then Senator Waters said Fraser Island 'had a massive bushfire', as it does every now and then, and—wait for it—'a 1,000-year-old tree is threatened'. Really? I know a 10,000-year-old civilisation that is being threatened globally—with no data, just false statements and fear.

I remind the Senate that my questioning of CSIRO, my holding of the CSIRO to account, has shown these things. The CSIRO has admitted to me that they have never said there is danger from carbon dioxide from human activity. Never. So why are we going through this nonsense? Secondly, the CSIRO admitted to me that today's temperatures are not unprecedented. That means we didn't cause them. There were warmer temperatures in the past. Thirdly, when they couldn't respond properly with evidence to my questions, they said they rely upon climate models. Their climate models show that they are not based on data. Their climate models are invalidated and have proven erroneous. The fact that they have to resort to them—their fabrications—means they don't have any data. We have 17 scientists from leading organisations around the world who have shown that the CSIRO is wrong and I am right that the CSIRO has no evidence.

Senator Waters talked about the government's role in letting the country down by not having adequate policies on climate. The government has three basic roles. The first is to protect life. There is no threat to life from current climate variability. The crippling energy threat destroying our energy sector is a threat to life. Ask anybody who is old and poor. Secondly, government has to protect property. With no data and for no reason, the government has stolen land from farmers, stolen their property rights, and that is a huge threat. The third role of government is to protect freedom. Again, there is no data, no reason; they are just putting into place arbitrary regulations and policies that have complete control over people. Then Senator Waters said we need 10 years to get climate under control. Oh really! King Canute claimed he could part the waters in the Red Sea. Senator Waters is claiming to be able to control the climate. These things come and go. This is sheer arrogance, insanity and stupidity.

Al Gore claimed that the northern polar ice cap would disappear by 2013. He said that back in 2008. It is still there, as big as ever. There is a joke in which Al Gore is complaining about someone who has just made a statement that there will be no life on the planet, no polar ice caps, in five years. He says: 'Really? I've been saying that for 30 years. That's my statement!' This is absolutely stupid. And then we are told we will have 50 million climate refugees by 2010. That was said in 2005. We have had zero climate refugees, absolutely none. This is just a propaganda tool to scare people. Again, the use of propaganda confirms the lack of data and the lack of empirical scientific evidence.

Then Senator Waters talked about pure physics as her evidence—no data, no empirical scientific evidence, not even a claim of the relationship that is supposed to be underpinning this. She had no data, just false statements and fear. And then she talked about 'abundant, cheap, clean renewable energy'—her words. Let's look at that. Solar and wind are none of these things. Abundant? No. Intermittent. Unreliable. Cheap? No—the most expensive. Without subsidies, as Warren Buffett said, they're dead; they only live on subsidies. Alan Moran, the noted economist, using the government's own figures, has estimated the cost of climate subsidies and renewable energy subsidies as being $13 billion every year. That is $1,300 per household per annum in Australia. For nothing! This is on top of energy prices. And for every clean energy job there are 2.2 real jobs lost.

As for clean: they rely upon rare earths that come from child Labor in Africa. They're talking about the Kilcoy solar panels; cadmium and selenium will leach into the soil and the waterways—into Brisbane's water supply—if that solar plant project goes ahead.

And what about afterwards? What do we do with these windmills after their 15-year life? They're burying them in Wyoming right now. That's extra cost and extra pollution—real pollution. Solar panels are a real pollutant and they're now an environmental legacy. Again, there's a reason why windmills didn't last. Again, Senator Waters relies on no data, just false statements and fear. She cited nations declaring a climate emergency. Let's look at some of these. Japan is building coal-fired power stations. France relies on nuclear energy. Britain relies on French nuclear energy through an interlinked cable and also relies upon wood pellets burned in an old coal-fired power station—they cut down American forests and transport them across to Britain, using hydrocarbon fuels. And Germany is now building coal-fired power stations.

Then Senator Waters quoted socialist Christiana Fuegeres, who is a senior bureaucrat in the UN in charge of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—the governing body for this nonsense. She says openly that the aim of the whole climate campaign is to convert the world to socialism and to change the economic system—change the economic system! Those are her words, not mine—again, no data, just misrepresentations and fear. That's all Senator Waters is relying upon.

We don't have time to go into the motion itself; it's easily torn apart. But I will remind the chamber that 10 years ago, on 7 October 2010, I challenged Senator Waters, in a public forum that we both attended as panellists, to debate me on climate science and the corruption of climate science. She jumped to her feet faster than I've ever seen her move and said, 'I won't debate you.' In May 2016 she again refused my public request to have a debate. Four hundred and forty days ago, on Monday 9 September 2019, I challenged her again, and Senator Di Natale. But they continued to refuse to debate me and they refused to provide the evidence to the Senate—no data and no proof. There was no debate, just shouted alarm—false statements and alarm.

If the Senate keeps making decisions without data then this Senate ceases to be the people's house of review and continues to be the circus of useless gestures—the big top of virtue signalling and the ministry of silly walks. Senator Hanson and I will continue to use the empirical scientific evidence, the hard facts, to continue to respect and restore the house of review for the people of Australia. There is no climate emergency, there is a governance emergency.