Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

This country cannot afford old-style reckless spending anymore. But last week the House heard about the performance of the member for Wentworth in unilaterally rejecting expert scientific advice to fund the rain-making technology being touted by the Australian Rain Corporation to the tune of $2 million. As the House heard, the minister instead wrote back to the Prime Minister and then insisted on heaping $10 million of taxpayers’ hard-earned money on this private enterprise—but that figure was five times more than the member for Wentworth was advised of and this was at a time when inflation was brewing.

But today I can reveal that, one year earlier, the member for Wentworth wrote to a scientific expert, telling him that intentional weather modification simply does not work. That correspondence states:

By and large, these trials have produced results that were inconclusive at best. Furthermore, the American National Academy of Science also concluded, on October 2003, that convincing scientific proof of the efficacy of intentional weather modification efforts were still lacking.

The letter continues:

The CSIRO has largely abandoned its active research effort after more than 30 years due to inconclusive results.

It further says:

The CSIRO has concluded that cloud seeding is unlikely to be effective during winter and spring over the inland plains of southern and eastern Australia and similarly inconclusive during summer over eastern and north-eastern Australia and immediately in the north of Perth.

Mr Speaker, can you imagine how much of taxpayers’ money the member for Wentworth would have spent on this project if he had actually believed in it?

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