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

Balance between sources and sinks—wonderful!—and no impact of costs on the economy. So let's have a look at another aspect of this. You're not aware of net zero—it took you a long while to come up with that—and the best you can do is go to the United Nations, a fraudulent organisation—the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Senator Wong couldn't do it yesterday, so let's consider another agency that you rely on, the CSIRO. From September 2016 to March 2022 I've cross-examined the CSIRO and the previous Chief Scientist on climate science. CSIRO's climate science team made three presentations to me and my Senate office team, each about 2½ hours in length, and the first one was attended by the Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall. During the CSIRO's presentations, Minister, they made these facts, they stated these statements or they failed to confirm. Are you aware of these?

First of all, I must say that the CSIRO has been the primary reference for the Greens, the Labor Party, the National Party and the Liberal Party in government for their positions on climate change. The CSIRO admitted in its first presentation to me, under my cross-examination and my team's cross-examination, that it has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity poses a danger. So we asked them, 'Where did the politicians come up with this pronouncement that you have stated that?' They said, 'Well, you'd better check with the politicians.' This is a political issue. Statements of danger came from politicians.

The second point: the CSIRO never quantified, in any of their three presentations or in Senate estimates since, any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on any climate or weather variable such as temperature, rainfall, droughts, storms, ocean alkalinity, ocean salinity—nothing. Yet these are the fundamental basis that the National Party, the Liberal Party, the Labor Party and the Greens and Senator Pocock rely upon as a basis for climate and energy policy.

Thirdly, the CSIRO admitted—admitted—today's temperatures are not unprecedented. Today's temperatures are not unprecedented, CSIRO admission. CSIRO has failed to provide any logical scientific point showing that carbon dioxide from human activity causes climate change and needs to be cut. CSIRO relied instead upon unvalidated, erroneous and discredited computer models, which is what you're relying on now to squeeze the Australian people. The CSIRO has failed to provide any statistically significant evidence of any change in any climate or weather factor. They've never provided the empirical data or the logical scientific points on that. CSIRO initially relied upon one discredited paper on temperatures, Marcott 2013—one paper, after 48 years of so-called climate science. We demolished that—in fact, it had been demolished when it was first released. CSIRO has failed to actually counter what we've said about Marcott. They ran away from that discussion and stopped talking about it. Then they presented Harries 2001, a sole paper on carbon dioxide. They could not refute our criticism of those papers. Then they presented Lecavalier on temperatures. They have failed to produce any response to that—any response at all. That Lecavalier paper on temperature was in 2017 and, on carbon dioxide, they came out with Feldman 2015. Again, that was shown to be completely irrelevant, and the CSIRO has failed to come back to us again.

These are fundamental things. The CSIRO admitted that it has not done due diligence on data that it's brought in and relied upon from external agencies. CSIRO admits to not doing due diligence on reports from external agencies or on supposedly scientific papers it has provided. This is what this bill is based on. CSIRO revealed little understanding of papers it cited as evidence. CSIRO allows politicians and journalists to misrepresent CSIRO without correction, and the CSIRO has misled parliament. Minister, are you aware of these fundamental facts?