Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Will the minister update the House on the current debate about climate change? Why is a rational debate necessary, and are there any impediments to this debate?

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Throsby for his question. The scientific consensus on climate change is very clear. Every scientific academy in the world, as well as the World Meteorological Organisation, NASA and the CSIRO—to name just a few—accepts the climate science and recognises that climate change is a real threat to our prosperity and our security. The government respects the science, and that is why we are committed to putting a price on carbon, because it is the most efficient, least-cost way of driving down pollution in our economy and driving investment in clean energy. Too often the public debate on climate change is not informed by rigorous scientific evidence and careful policy analysis. Sometimes it is informed by nothing more than conspiracy theories, alarmism and fear. We have heard that Lord Monckton, who is a well-known climate change denier, is visiting Australia to address a mining conference in Perth. He has recently described Professor Garnaut, an eminent economist advising the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, as a neo-Nazi for saying that the scientific consensus should be respected. This is the same Lord Monckton who has previously stated that climate change is a global communist conspiracy hatched in the UN for the purposes of establishing world government. It is the same Lord Monckton who, along with Alan Jones, David Flint and Andrew Bolt—all fellow travellers of the Leader of the Opposition—has been a participant in the so-called Galileo Movement, a climate change deniers movement. It is the same Lord Monckton who the Leader of the Opposition met the day after releasing his subsidies-for-polluters policy in February 2010. On that occasion the Leader of the Opposition had this to say about his meeting with Lord Monckton:

I think that you actually come up with better policy if you're prepared to have a discussion not just with people who say yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir.

Lord Monckton has clearly been a key adviser on the coalition subsidies-for-polluters policy, and this is the same Lord Monckton that the Leader of the Opposition will share a platform with at the upcoming mining conference. That conference will probably be subjected to the same demeaning performance that the Leader of the Opposition put on here for the Minerals Council, begging for a TV advertising campaign to be run against carbon pricing and giving commitments that he would bring back Work Choices. This is the same Lord Monckton who the member for Wentworth this morning described as 'a rather sick, vaudeville character who makes more and more outlandish charges in order to get attention for himself'. At least, in part, that statement might be evocative of some of the performances of the Leader of the Opposition and his scare campaigns about carbon pricing. The truth of the matter is that the Leader of the Opposition associates himself with extremists—when he addresses rallies, with Pauline Hanson, with the League of Rights, with Lord Monckton—and it is unbefitting of a political leader in this country to hold these views and to have these associations.