Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. There's the antiscience rubbish that is spouted from that side of the chamber from the Morrison government. I might say it's not just confined to the backbench. We have Senator Rennick, Mr George Christensen, Senator Canavan and a bunch of others, but we also have the Deputy Prime Minister, who is one of the cheerleaders of antiscience in this parliament—so much so that he dismisses climate change science almost in totality and dismisses the science in relation to water security in this country. Even this afternoon, the Leader of the National Party, the Deputy Prime Minister of this country, Mr Joyce, had his party declare that they are going to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in this place when it comes before the parliament tomorrow, to remove the prohibition on nuclear power in this country. They don't quote science in relation to this. It is all part of their crazy whack job agenda. It is part of the tin foil hat brigade which keeps the seats warm on that side of the chamber in the Morrison government. It suits the Prime Minister, of course, to have these crazy fringe groups within his own party banging on about this stuff, because it makes him look almost reasonable. Everything is relative.

You see the scientific facts, the warning signs from around the world, and the world's leading climate scientists tell us, point blank, that we are running out of time to take action on climate change and reverse the catastrophe facing our environment. If you're the Prime Minister of the country and you stand at a press conference today addressing the nation and telling them you're doing enough, it's because you don't believe in science; it's because you don't have regard for science and scientific fact; it's because you don't listen to the experts.

Of course, this is the same Prime Minister who, when the COVID pandemic first hit and was spreading rapidly across the world and was starting to spread across Australia, dismissed the concerns of the experts. He said it was fine to shake hands. He said it was fine to go to the football. He said: 'We don't need any type of border controls. We don't need lockdowns. We probably don't even need a vaccine.' The Prime Minister was dragged kicking and screaming to take action in the midst of this pandemic, and it was because the rest of the country listened to the science. It was because other leaders around this country, our state premiers—of both persuasions, I might add—listened to the science and the health experts. It wasn't because it was coming from the Prime Minister. It certainly wasn't coming from the top.

I want to come back to this point about why this government is dismissing this important reference today to establish a parliamentary office of science. It's because they don't want to be challenged. They don't want to be held to account. We've got people like Mr Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, free-ranging on government policy, proposing to move drastic amendments to government legislation, such as building nuclear power in this country, without any facts, without any science, without regard to the huge amount of nuclear waste that something like this creates, and without regard to the cost, the time frame or the huge amount of water that Australia actually can't afford in the midst of a drying climate. We don't even have time to daydream about these types of projects anymore. The science is clear. We have to take action now, and we know what we have to do. We have to get onto renewables. And it's here: it's wind; it's solar; it's storage. We don't have the luxury of spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on feasibility studies for some pixie dust idea of a nuclear power plant in 20 years time. The climate is already in crisis. Of course, this is what has happened to this government. Mr Morrison has lost control. The science-deniers on his side—the science deniers that sit on both the frontbench and the backbench of this government—are running rings around the Prime Minister, creating chaos wherever they can find it. Today is just another example. No wonder this reference is being voted down today.

I have one question for the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Joyce. He has today announced that the National Party want a nuclear power station to be built in this country. They want to amend laws tomorrow in this place. Where's it going to go? In whose town and whose suburb is Mr Joyce's first nuclear power plant going to be built? I put it to you that, if a member of the National Party can walk in here tonight or tomorrow and tell us in which town they want this nuclear power station built, I'll debate them in the town. Let's hire the hall and let's get it started. They won't, because they are cowards. They are running an antiscience agenda. They're running an anticlimate agenda. They are anti-planet, they're anti-people and they're anti-Australian. They want to hold our country back. They are all in it for themselves. They think this is a quick, cheap political pointscoring exercise. It will get them some headlines.

Mr Morrison, as Prime Minister, doesn't have the guts to slap them down. We've seen that already. He refuses to call out Mr Christensen in terms of his COVID denialism and spreading of lies. They refuse to call out Senator Rennick for his reckless comments and behaviour. They refuse to call out Senator Canavan. The nut jobs in the National Party have the Prime Minister running scared.