Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Hansard source

Those who would weaponise climate fear—let's put it that way—in order to appease their globalist and corporate interests are no friends of Australia. I'll tell you why. They are championing the shutdown of our cheap, reliable coal-fired and gas-fired power while China is fast-tracking hundreds of coal-fired power plants. China already has six times more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the world combined—but it wants even more. Last year, China approved 106 gigawatts of new coal-fired power projects. That is five times more than all the coal-fired power stations in Australia's national electricity market. We know why they are doing this: coal power is cheap and coal power is reliable.

China is flourishing, but the cost of everything in Australia is going through the roof, and our standard of living is decreasing. Australian pensioners and battlers can't afford to heat or cool their homes. Australian families can't afford to pay grocery bills. And China's energy cost advantages are killing Australia's manufacturing sector. The insanity of the climate cult will eventually bankrupt Australia.

Fear is not grounded in fact. I'll take this opportunity to remind the Australian people of some historical far-left fearmongering. Our friends at the Guardian back in 2004 warned former US President Bush that Britain would have a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2007 Professor Flannery claimed, 'Even the rain that falls isn't going to fill our dams and our river systems.' In 2007, 2008 and 2009 Al Gore claimed that there was a scientific consensus that the North Pole would be 'ice free by 2013'. I think Santa's home is pretty safe for now. In 2018, Greta Thunberg tweeted:

A top climate change scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.

Well, it's 2023. I guess we'd better pray that we're not all wiped out in the next four months. Thanks, Greta!

As you can tell from this sample of quotes, apparently the science is well and truly settled. I'll tell you what: these people are as cooked as their predictions. Our government is so obsessed with net zero that it is sacrificing our economy for policies that make net zero sense. And the only people who benefit from this, the only ones, are the globalists and, of course, the CCP. That's who benefits.