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

The minister did not answer my question as to why China and India are not doing what this Labor-Greens-teal-Pocock coalition government is doing, nor Russia. The amount of carbon dioxide output China and India produce in a week is what we produce in a year. They're continuing to skate along. In fact, China and India buy our coal that you are trying to stop the use of here. These people in the Greens are also trying to stop the use of our coal. As Senator Duniam said, this is not about cutting carbon dioxide from human activity; it's about shifting it to our major competitors and giving them the advantage of our cheap, clean, high-efficiency coal. Japan is building coal-fired power stations. The United States allows gas—that's the only thing that's saved the United States.

You talk about jobs. For every job in the solar and wind sector there are 2.3 jobs lost in the real economy, so why can other countries have the benefit of our high-quality coal and gas and yet we cannot? We're the largest exporters of gas in the world; second-largest exporter of coal in the world—beaten by our neighbour right next door to us, Indonesia. We're killing our productive capacity and our children's future. We're already at net zero. We sequester, as a country, three times the carbon dioxide that we produce as humans in this country—three times, and that's not including what the ocean around us absorbs.

The cost of the Labor-Greens-teal-Pocock bill are extraordinarily high, and we notice you've been driven to this by the Greens, who will ultimate responsibility. You didn't ask my question: why are we publishing Australian families, Australian workers and Australian employers? Why are we gutting our country, because of the primacy of energy has been proven since the start of the Industrial Revolution?

Let's move to the science now because there's been no justification in science for cutting carbon dioxide from human activity—no empirical scientific data, no logical scientific points that prove that, and certainly nowhere that is showing the specific quantified effect of dioxide from human activity. That is the basis of policy. That's the only basis of policy, and you run from it.

We agree in some ways because I accept the science has to the basis of policy. You're saying that, but you're not delivering it. You've had many opportunities to give us the science and you won't do it. You've distorted the science, but you finish almost every statement about me with, 'You'll never agree, Senator Roberts'. I will agree the moment you provide me with the specific quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on any aspect of climate. I will agree immediately after I've assessed that science. This government, you say, accepts the science of climate change, but you cannot produce it. You've had six or seven years now, since I first came into this Senate, and you've never produced it once. That's because it's not available. How the hell can you have a policy about carbon dioxide from human effect if you can't specify the quantity, if you can't then assess alternative ways of meeting the targets, if you can't track the progress? How the hell can you have a policy? You're asking the people of Australia to jump off a cliff. How will you know how to continue, how to stop?

You talk about peer-reviewed papers. That's not my only gripe. Peer reviewed is false right now; we know that. The Lancet journal in Britain had a peer-reviewed paper that said up to 50 per cent of peer-reviewed papers are crap. You trust the science, yet you cannot produce it.