What changed to make the Coalition adopt country-killing net-zero?

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https://youtu.be/25wrsuzXz8Q

Scott Morrison won the last election by bashing Bill Shorten on his climate policies, especially a net-zero emissions commitment. After getting elected for not buying into the climate nonsense, Scott Morrison unexplainably signed us up to net zero despite CSIRO confirming there was no change in the ‘Science’™.

There’s still no proof that human produced carbon dioxide affects the climate and needs to be cut. By signing up to net-zero, Scott Morrison has given a death kiss to productive agriculture, mining and every Australians power bills with no justification..

Transcript

If you could be as quick as you could.

[Roberts] Thank you. And thank you all for attending. My questions are gonna be initially to the minister. And then if there’s time to the Chief Executive, of CSIRO. Minister, referring to the government’s change in its 2050 net zero policy in the 2019 election, the government’s opposition to the UN’s 2050 net zero carbon dioxide policy gained you many votes and a lot of political traction and you used the the policy, Labor’s adoption of the policy to really smash the opposition leader Bill Shorten. Just two years later, after emphatically repeatedly and thoroughly criticising Labor and the Greens, there was an unexplained reversal last year and the government adopted the UN’s 2015 net zero carbon dioxide policy. What is the specific change in climate science in which the government’s change of policy is based?

Oh, well, thank you. I think to answer that question in detail I think it will probably be best for the environment minister, but I would simply say that I don’t accept the premise of all of what you’ve said in terms of-

[Roberts] What do you disagree with?

Well, you said unexplained. I mean, obviously we went through quite a detailed process. The prime minister spoke on a number of occasions about his desire to get to a net zero position if it can be done in a way that protects Australian jobs and continues to see industries thrive. And that’s what Minister Taylor worked on. Now we’re not obviously in the space where we have the detail in terms of those portfolios, but it was explained over a period of time. The government made the decision. Obviously, it played out publicly where there was a conversation, I think, with the Australian people. And obviously, there was a live debate that you were aware of that the coalition went through when the government came to a conclusion.

[Roberts] Okay. It wasn’t explained in terms of some change in science. There was no references. There was no document. No publications referred to no specific page numbers of the change in the data or the cause. So there was nothing to change the policy.

Well, as I say, the government was not prepared to commit to such a policy without being able to do the work as to how we would get there and how we would do so in a responsible way. And that was the the job that Minister Taylor in particular was tasked with. And that was the the work that fed into the government decision. Now, in terms of the detail, the various portfolio parts of that, I think that’s probably for another part of estimates.

[Roberts] Okay.

I think that summarises the government’s position.

[Roberts] Well, let’s go back a step further. What’s the basis of the government’s climate policy and ensuring policies on consequent policies on energy, agriculture, manufacturing, social policy and other aspects that the UN’s climate and associated policies impact? What’s the overall basis?

Sorry. I might just get you to repeat that question, sorry.

[Roberts] What is the basis of the government’s climate policy and the consequent policies that stumble on from that on energy agriculture, manufacturing, social policy and other aspects that the UN’s climate and associated policies impact?

Well, look, it’s a fairly broad question.

[Roberts] It is.

I might ask officials if they can assist.

[Man] There are appearing in my data.

Yeah. [Joe Evans] Miss Evans.

Very quickly, Joe Evans, the deputy secretary in the department and Senator, the basis is really the globally agreed science on climate change, which is articulated through the International Panel on Climate Change reports

[Roberts] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

That’s the one. Yeah.

[Roberts] Okay. Thank you. That was nice and quick. Back to the minister. Cutting human carbon dioxide output has had huge costly impacts across our society, especially on fundamentals for productivity and prosperity, for example, energy. Surely the only sound basis for a policy with such economic consequences is the specific effect of changing human carbon dioxide output. The impact for example of a specified change in human output of carbon dioxide, what specific impact would it have on climate factors such as temperature, rainfall, droughts, wind? So the specific impact. Then when the effect is quantified, only then can we do a cost benefit analysis of the cost of doing that and the benefits that come from that. And significantly, we can’t do any measurement of progress as we implement the policy unless we’ve got that specific impact of carbon dioxide. What is that specific impact of carbon dioxide on various climate factors?

Well, I’m happy for officials to elaborate, but I mean, in terms of what the government’s approach has been, it has been to be part of The Paris Agreement. So part of collective action across the world where we are doing our part, and we’ve been doing that obviously with our emissions reductions to date, which have been tracking, in fact, ahead of many comparable OECD nations and many sort of comparable resource-rich nations, such as Canada.

[Roberts] So what would be the extra impact of tracking?

But if I can also go to your question, and in the preamble to your question around, you talked about other economic impacts or impacts in relation to higher energy prices and the like. What we’ve seen under our government in the last few years is actually energy prices coming down year on year and coming down quarter on quarter. So we as a government never look at these issues in isolation. We look at it as part of that collective response and taking our responsibilities to the environment seriously, but never taking our eye off the ball, in terms of the need for affordable and reliable energy for instance. And that’s something that we’ve been delivering and that’s been our track record.

Senator Roberts, we got to go to the office of the chief scientist at 6:25. So I know you did want to ask some questions to the Chief Executive Officer, of CSIRO. So I just wanted to give you that chance.

[Roberts] Thank you. So essentially what you’re saying, Senator Seselja, is that your answer is the same as the one Senator Cormann gave me repeatedly when I asked questions in the Senate and wrote him letters? That was, we’ve got to do our part of global agreements.

I’m not aware of exactly what former Minister Cormann-

[Roberts] That’s the gist.

Well, as I say, I’ll take you take your word for that.

[Roberts] I can show you his letters.

Sure. I’m not disputing. All I’m saying is I’m not aware of exactly what Minister Cormann told you, but my evidence is the evidence I’ve just given.

[Roberts] Assuming what I’ve said to you of Senator Cormann’s responses, you’re agreeing with it.

Well, look, it’s a difficult question to answer without seeing all the detail of what you’ve said but I think my evidence speaks for itself.

[Roberts] Okay. Bob Hawke’s Labor government first introduced the climate topic in the eighties. Then in 1996, the Howard Anderson Liberal-National’s government first made it policy. On what specific quantified effect did they base that policy? Do you know?

Well, look, I think you’re talking about history of before I was in this place. And so I would prefer without having been involved in those discussions, I don’t feel qualified to give a detail answer on that.

[Roberts] No, I understand. It’s okay. Are you aware that the Howard-Anderson Liberal-National’s government implemented their renewable energy target that is gutting electricity and industry, generally? That they stole farmer’s property rights to use their land. And they did that deceitfully going around the constitution, section 51, clause 31. And that John Howard was the first leader of a large party to adopt an emissions trading scheme, which Tony Abbott rightly called a carbon dioxide tax. Are you aware of those major policies that are now still in play? And John Howard actually said that the renewable energy target has gone too far now?

Well, I certainly wouldn’t accept your characterisation of some of those policies in the way you’ve framed them, and certainly in relation to those fine leaders of our nation that you’ve sort of characterised their policies in a certain way. So no, I wouldn’t agree with that.

[Roberts] Okay. Thank you.

Sorry. Senator Roberts, I’m sorry-

[Roberts] I just got one thing to follow up.

Well, it’s gotta be very quick.

[Roberts] It will be very quick. Are you aware that six years after being booted from office in 2007, in 2013, John Howard admitted, at a global warming sceptics annual address in London, that on climate science he was agnostic yet he introduced these policies?

No, I wasn’t aware of that, but I am aware-

[Roberts] Thank you very much, chair.

Thank you, Senator.

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70% of Australian COVID deaths had a pre-existing condition

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Recently the Government changed its tune, but you used to be a conspiracy theorist for pointing out there was a difference between dying with COVID or from COVID. Now with the official release of Australian Bureau of Statistics data we have it confirmed just how many of those who died had other contributing factors.

It’s just another tick on the list of things “conspiracy theorists” been saying all along that the Government has tried to deny the truth of.

Transcript

[Malcolm] Thank you Chair, and thank you all for being here. My questions have to do with death data, particularly from COVID and information gathering. Can I reference your diagram entitled, Data Flow for Doctor Certified Deaths? I think that’s it there. It’s off your website.

[Committee Member] Do you need a copy of that, Mr. Gruen?

[Dr. Gruen] It’s a question of whether it’s in this publication or not but I know a copy would be helpful.

[Committee Member] Not sure this is speeding things up.

[Malcolm] Multitasking.

[Dr. Gruen] So just in summary, it’s a really simple workflow. So it’s a data flow for doctor certified deaths. The workflow is, someone dies, death event, doctor certifies, or it goes to a funeral director, but that’s only a small percentage. And then from there it continues to where the doctor then sends a certification sent to the state births, deaths and marriages. And then from there, the state officers send data weekly to the ABS, that’s broad summary.

And of course Senator, it doesn’t include deaths that would go to the coroner, so it’s not all the deaths.

[Malcolm] Correct, but that’s a small number.

[Dr. Gruen] 20 percentish, I think.

[Malcolm] 20, okay.

[Dr. Gruen] I believe so.

[Malcolm] But they eventually get entered in later, when the coroner has resolved.

[Dr. Gruen] Yes.

[Malcolm] And we’ve also got the Queensland process here, but that just verifies what you’re saying. Can I have copy back please?

[Dr. Gruen] Yes, certainly.

[Malcolm] So is that correct?

[Dr. Gruen] If it came from our website, it’s correct.

[Malcolm] And my summary, which is backed up by the-

[Dr. Gruen] I think the summary, I didn’t hear anything in the summary that I would take exception to.

[Malcolm] Thank you. When a doctor certifies a death, they certify a cause of death, thank you. If the cause of death is unknown, the matter is referred to the coroner to decide. Between 86 and 89% of deaths are doctor certified, meaning we know the cause of death at the time we know of the death. So my question is, the transfer of doctor certified death data from the state to the ABS, how long does that take? And has this reporting time changed over the last three years?

[Dr. Gruen] We can take that on notice exactly how long it takes but certainly what we have started to do, and we started doing this, I think in 2020, was to start publishing deaths data purely on the basis of deaths certified by doctors. So before that, we had an annual publication of all deaths but it was very substantially delayed. So the annual publication would come out something like 10 months after the end of the year for which it was reporting. One of the other things that we did as a consequence of COVID, was to see whether we could provide useful information on mortality much faster, and so we instituted a new publication, which is monthly, which is called Provisional Mortality Statistics. And what we do is report on doctor certified deaths that we have collected up to that point in time.

[Malcolm] And then if they come in later because the doctor is slow, whatever, you add them.

[Dr. Gruen] Exactly, so in other words, if you look at the subsequent month’s publication, it will have slightly more of certified deaths in the previous month because new ones have been added, that’s correct.

[Malcolm] Okay. So referencing your website, the causes of death in Australia, the last data release, I think you may have explained this, was September 2021 for the period calendar 2020. That’s what you said, it was about nine or 10 months later. Is this the most recent data, other than the COVID data released on the 15th of February? That’s this one here, COVID mortality in Australia.

[Dr. Gruen] I’ve got it. So the answer is, the annual data is the deaths from both doctor and coroner certified. That’s the annual data, but we are as well as that, doing a monthly publication of just doctor certified deaths. Those come out monthly.

[Malcolm] So the annual is accurate in terms of, it got the coroners.

[Dr. Gruen] It’s complete.

[Malcolm] Complete, thank you. Yeah, they’re all accurate. So, let’s continue. So referencing the COVID-19 mortality in Australia which you have in front of you, issued 15th of February, 2022. Quote, it says, “COVID-19 deaths that occurred by 31st of January, 2022 that have been registered and received by the ABS.”, end of quote. So here we’ve got death data, and cause of death data that’s only two weeks old. Not three months old for single mortality figure or 10 months for the cause of death. Could you go through that report on the bottom of the first page, Mr. Gruen? 2,639 deaths where people died with or from COVID. What do you mean by with or from, specifically?

[Dr. Gruen] So that’s explained later in the document. The vast majority of them are from, a small number are with. So if you look at page three, it explains, there were 83 deaths, which were COVID-19 related. Sorry, I’m reading from a doc point in the middle of page three.

[Malcolm] No, no, I’ve got it sampled.

[Dr. Gruen] 83 deaths, which were COVID-19 related. The person died with COVID-19, confirmed or suspected, but it was not the underlying cause of death.

[Malcolm] So COVID was not the underlying cause, it was something else.

[Dr. Gruen] That’s right. So just to be clear, there were 2,704 deaths that were either with or from COVID, and of those, only 83 were with, the rest were from. So the vast majority are from.

[Malcolm] The cause of death was COVID, okay. So if we turn over to page two, at the top of page two, you have chronic cardiac symptoms with the most common preexisting chronic condition for those who had COVID-19, certified as the underlying cause of death. That goes back to the previous page, the second bullet point, the majority of deaths had an underlying cause. So where would that fit in, the 83?

[Dr. Gruen] No, no. So there were a substantial proportion of the people who died from COVID had preexisting conditions, right? But the preexisting condition didn’t kill them, but the COVID was the underlying cause of death. But the fact that they had a preexisting condition, was material.

[Malcolm] So is there any percentage of those who died with or from, who had chronic cardiac conditions?

[Dr. Gruen] Yes. It’s a good publication, Senator. It’s worth reading.

[Malcolm] I haven’t read it all.

[Dr. Gruen] No, that’s okay. Associated causes conditions in the a causal sequence, page eight. That will tell you about all the… Hang on, preexisting conditions, sorry. Preexisting conditions, page nine. And there’s a chart on page 10, which shows you what the conditions were and the proportions.

[Malcolm] So that’s percentages, are they?

[Dr. Gruen] Yes.

[Malcolm] Okay, so these are percent of the 83?

[Dr. Gruen] No, percent of the 2000. We’re talking about people who have… Yes, that’s it. Preexisting conditions were reported on death certificates for nearly 70% of the 2,556 deaths due to COVID. That’s a sentence at the bottom of page nine. And then the conditions, that chart-

[Malcolm] On the graph.

[Dr. Gruen] The chart shows you the proportion of chronic conditions that were reported on the death certificate. And you can have more than one, cheerfully.

[Malcolm] Cheerfully, right. Okay, so turning now to birth data…

[Dr. Gruen] That’s not gonna help.

[Malcolm] The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases birth data at the end of the year following. This data could influence the debate around the effect of vaccines on reproduction and may provide reassurance to vaccine customers. Why does it take so long to report on a simple metric like births? I understand the delay in the deaths for the getting the accurate annual figure, but why does it take so long for births?

[Dr. Gruen] Yeah, so I don’t know the answer to that question.

[Malcolm] I will take that on notice, Senator.

[Dr. Gruen] Yeah, we can certainly take that on notice.

[Malcolm] So the Australian Bureau of Statistics budget has grown 18% in the last year from 497 million in 2019/20 to 588 million in 2021. Is that enough to get your data out in a timely fashion?

[Dr. Gruen] So as you would be aware, the bureau publishes data across a very wide range of topics, economic, social, environmental, demographic. And so, obviously timeliness is one of the things that we care about, and in answer to Senator Walsh’s questions, I was talking about some of the new products that we have produced that have been much more timely to help decision makers in the pandemic, but there’s no question, there’s a limit. And the other thing that we care critically about is accuracy and making sure that what we produce is correct. So some of these things do take a substantial amount of time, that we are cognisant of that, and we do our best to publish them as quickly as we can, and it ultimately is a function of the resources available to us.

[Malcolm] Last question. What you’re saying, and I would agree if this is the case, is that it is better to have accurate data a little delayed, than timely data that’s not accurate.

[Dr. Gruen] It depends on the circumstances. In a situation where a pandemic has just broken out, we made the judgement that we were happy to produce data that was somewhat less accurate, fast. So there are circumstances where you are willing to accept that trade off.

[Malcolm] Is there any way we can get that

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