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

Firstly, Minister, I agree with you that there is evidence of confusion besetting the coalition. It has been doing so since John Howard's prime ministership in the early 2000s, when he changed his mind on climate and later admitted that he was agnostic on the climate science.

Minister, I will be reading your papers yet again, but let me ask you—because you have still not answered—what is the specific quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on any climate factor? I would like to know that number. That is fundamental to the basis of any policy or legislation. No-one has provided it anywhere in the world. This is your bill. You need to provide it.

Secondly, I only need that specific, quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity. If you provide it and it's accurate, then I'll be silent. This issue long ago became a matter not of science or of the environment; it became a matter of integrity. We've got hypocritical parasitic billionaires doing a reverse Robin Hood, stealing via a highly regressive tax from the poor and the vulnerable—and you endorse that. We've got a Paris Agreement that is not an agreement. In the Paris Agreement they agreed that each country would do whatever it wanted to do. China said, 'Up yours; we're not doing anything!' India said the same. But Australia said, 'We will gut our economy.' And now you're going to ramp it up even further.

I'd like your view on this, Minister. Senator Whish-Wilson said that his party has a mandate. Mandates do not supplant science. Mandates based on positions that are based on lies are not mandates. Until you provide this Senate and the people of Australia with the specific quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on the climate, or any climate or weather factor, you will not have a mandate.

Senator Whish-Wilson raised the IPCC. Let's have a look at the creator of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.