Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have gone from a doc to a dope because I would like to talk about the member for Corangamite. My colleague has just spoken about Doc Evatt. There is a false prophet in my patron seat of Corangamite and I am referring to Labor's Darren Cheeseman who, in a desperate effort to sell the Gillard—

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, on a point of order: I understand that the senator is trying to be funny but I do not know that the word he used to describe the member for Corangamite is parliamentary. I request him to withdraw it.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the member took offence I will withdraw the comment. Mr Cheeseman, in a desperate attempt to sell a price on carbon, turned to a religious metaphor and has warned of the great flood to come. In Noah's time, humanity's sin was that it had become corrupted, but in Mr Cheeseman's mind the Geelong region's sin is that it has become industrious. Cars have been manufactured, cement has been made, meat has been processed, milk has been produced and the manufacturing industry is creating jobs—all sinful activity in the eyes of the member for Corangamite that needs to be stopped by a new tax.

Knowing how badly news of a price on carbon would be taken in Corangamite, Mr Cheeseman needed to create a climate of fear. He drafted a speech that he had planned to give in parliament about the subject which warned of the disaster to come. This speech, however, was never delivered. I assume that someone in the Labor Party—someone in the Rudd government spin machine—knew that the words I am about to quote to the chamber are too crazy to be said in public. That is why if you search Hansard for what Mr Cheeseman said on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment Bill on 9 September 2009 you will not find these words. He must have run them by someone in the Labor Party who told him, 'You can't say that, people will think you're a fool, or the words will simply confirm it.'

But in March 2010, when it came to posting his speech on the website, Mr Cheeseman, through sheer incompetence posted the speech he was going to give, not the speech that he gave. Here is what the false prophet, Mr Cheeseman, the Noah of Geelong, had to say on his website—the speech he wanted to give but even his party would not let him give. I read the speech that was posted on the website, not the one that he actually gave in the other place:

The Great Ocean Road Mr Speaker, an icon of Australia and the engine room of our local tourism economy, will be largely destroyed.

It will be breached in place after place, if sea level rise is as expected.

Huge swathes of the Bellarine Peninsula will be inundated.

Current areas of the mainland will be cut off and become islands.

Queenscliffe will become an island.

The area from Barwon Heads to Breamlea will become an island.

This man is an elected representative of parliament. The member for Corangamite, like Noah who came before him, warns of the Great Flood to come. But is it his global warming religion or science which drives Mr Cheeseman's claims? It is definitely not the science. As was reported exclusively in the Australian on 22 July 2011, the New South Wales government adviser Phil Watson has written a peer reviewed paper which concludes that rises in sea levels are decelerating. Phil Watson's paper questions the connection between climate change and rising sea levels.

Mr Cheeseman's claims that Queenscliffe and Barwon Heads will both become islands is just plain wrong and utterly stupid. Mr Cheeseman's great flood will never happen. But Mr Cheeseman and Labor persist with this carbon tax. Noah's solution was to build an ark and put each of the two animals on it. As Mr Cheeseman has been one of the government's harshest critics of the live animal export trade, this option of course is not available to him.

Mr Cheeseman's 'ark' is a great big tax on industry. It will punish those sinners who will be responsible for the upcoming great flood—the car manufacturers, the meat producers, the dairy farmers, the coalminers and the cement makers. A bit of common sense in this debate would not go astray. Queenscliffe will not be an island, nor will Barwon Heads or Breamlea; the Great Ocean Road will not be destroyed. The people of Corangamite deserve serious representation. They can do a lot better than this doomsday prophet who does not understand the science and never will. They deserve someone who will not make idiotic statements and they deserve someone who actually understands the needs and wants of their local community.