John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Much has been made of the conflicting statements made by the Leader of the Opposition about climate change. At one time he supported the evidence; later he denied the truth of the science. Despite his early support for a carbon tax, he began to espouse denial in the town of Beaufort, Victoria, where, as Craig Wilson, editor of the Pyrenees Advocate, reported, the Leader of the Opposition in referring to the science stated:

The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.

The story in the Australian reported by Stuart Rintoul on 12 December 2009 says, inter alia:

According to many in the room, he left no doubt that he was a climate change sceptic. He ruminated there had been many changes of climate over the millennia not caused by man. Finally, he said the science behind climate change was "crap" …

So we see that the decision of the opposition to claim that the science behind measures to reduce carbon dioxide is crap was not based on evidence and was not acquired at a meeting with experts. Neither was it the result of careful study; it was the result of a cynical realisation that political advantage was to be gained from misrepresentation and deception, no matter the eventual consequences for the nation.

The opposition's claim, which calls into question the credibility of such strongly supported evidence for the effects of global warming, has deliberately damaged the reputation of science and the scientists who carry out research into climate change and, by implication, all other areas of scientific investigation. Further, the undermining by the Leader of the Opposition of public confidence in science for political gain has directly harmed the national interest of the country and motivated an ignorant and scientifically illiterate fringe who, at worst, have made death threats against scientists working to understand the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions. The problem, as pointed out by CP Snow, for deniers such as the Leader of the Opposition is that they either lack the knowledge required to understand the evidence behind the warnings of the scientists or are unwilling to accept that science is an objective means of elucidating the nature of events in the natural world.

Of course the earth's climate has changed and will continue to change both under the influence of changes in the solar constant, which slowly increases over hundreds of millions of years as a consequence of continental drift moving the continents around over periods of millions of years, and as an effect of astronomical cycles hundreds of thousands of years long driving the ice ages. However, the present measurable changes that we see in the climate and the oceans are happening at a timescale of a few hundred years to a few decades and are entirely attributable to the effects of an increase in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide which is being produced by the burning of fossil fuels. There is abundant evidence from the fossil record and from observations of Venus and Mars that carbon dioxide controls the climate on those planets and on the earth, through processes that are very well understood. As is well known, the surface of a planet warms as it absorbs energy from the sun in visible wavelengths where carbon dioxide is transparent and then re-emits energy in the infrared at wavelengths where carbon dioxide is opaque. The effect is that incoming energy from the sun is trapped and warms the surface and the atmosphere instead of radiating directly to space.

Australians are rightly concerned about the consequences of the election of an Abbott government if the policies of the conservative governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Canada are any guide to the likely behaviour of a federal Liberal-National party government. In Canada the Arctic is in meltdown, yet the Conservative party, which is led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has abandoned commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has cut back spending on science and has muzzled scientists who may dare to make statements that deviate from the government's position on greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the new Canadian government has shut down the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, the key monitoring system for measuring global temperatures and ozone levels, presumably as a cost-cutting measure and probably because the laboratory was producing results that undermined the official position.

Would the Leader of the Opposition be a wrecker like his Canadian counterpart and shut down the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in Tasmania, which is a research facility of international importance that provides the best measurements of the global average of air quality, including the level of carbon dioxide and other pollutants? I ask the Leader of the Opposition to place in writing his commitment to maintain this internationally important facility should he ever become Prime Minister of our nation.

Question agreed to.

House adjourned at 22:30