Senate Estimates is a great chance for me to grill these climate agencies and get very specific about the evidence that they base their policies on.
This year, we saw yet again that they love to duck and weave, but won’t actually provide me with the evidence. I talked about this on Marcus Paul last week.
Senate Estimates Sessions: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/category/senate-estimates/march-2021/
Transcript
[Announcer] Now on “Marcus Paul in the Morning” Senator Malcolm Roberts.
[Marcus] All right, 17 minutes away from eight o’clock. Good day, Malcolm. How are you, mate?
[Malcolm] I’m very well, thanks, Marcus. How are you?
[Marcus] Good, good, good. Now I see, you’ve got the Bureau of Meteorology, and also Malcolm Turnbull, and also the CSIRO in your sights this morning. Who do you want to pick on first?
[Malcolm] Let’s go with the CSIRO.
[Marcus] All right. What do you have to say about them? Of course, this argument about renewables costing us, what, 13 billion bucks a year or $1,300 per household.
[Malcolm] That’s in addition to the electricity bill, that’s the additional cost per household, $1,300. Marcus, there’s some really simple figures to understand. The median income in Australia is $49,000, so after tax, what’s that, 30 something?
[Marcus] Yeah.
[Malcolm] The chief executive of the CSIRO is paid a total per year, every year of $1,049,000.
[Marcus] Not bad.
[Malcolm] The group executive in charge of overseeing the climate area, the climate research, is on $613,000, more than the Prime Minister of Australia.
[Marcus] Yeah, not bad.
[Malcolm] I put to them very basic questions about their so-called science, they refused to answer. These were the first time that I had asked questions about these pieces of information that they gave to me last Senate estimates. I’ve never had an opportunity to ask them questions before about this. This is the first time. They refused to answer. The basic things were that they gave me five new references, in senate estimates in October, I asked them questions about this.
They refused to answer. They refused to answer a representative of the people. And the papers that they provided to me, Kaufman 2020, for example, this is the sort of crap that CSIRO dishes up, when the authors of that paper input their data on climate into their calculations, they omitted the first data point and put it in in reverse order, complete false. The second reference they gave me directly contradicts the claims that the CSIRO says that it’s supposed to be supporting.
The third reference said they made conclusions on one data point, and they took it out of context and went against the CSIRO’s own advice to me last October. So what I’m saying to you is we are paying someone $1,049,000 a year, we’re paying someone else $613,000 a year, people in Australia cannot afford this nonsense, and now we’ve got no evidence whatsoever.
The CSIRO has admitted that they have never said to any politician that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger to our planet. That’s what politicians are saying. Why is this, Marcus, people are paying dearly for destroying manufacturing all because of this rubbish?
[Marcus] All right, now tell me about the Bureau of Meteorology.
[Malcolm] Well, here we go again, another government bureaucracy that’s claiming about climate. When they measure data, temperature, rainfall, et cetera, at a weather station, they also have metadata about the weather station that tells you, for example, how many times a station has been moved, because when it moves, it can have an effect on temperature and other recording devices. Townsville has been moved eight times.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s metadata says it’s been moved once. Metadata as well at Rockhampton moved four times, the Bureau says it’s been moved once. Cairns moved six times, the Bureau says it’s been moved twice. Charleville been moved four times, the Bureau says twice. The Bureau of Meteorology and its own peer reviewers fail to detect and discuss these glaring inaccuracies.
How can we rely on the Bureau of Meteorology which says temperatures are increasing, but they haven’t increased since 1995 globally, which is about almost 30 years, and our temperatures today are lower than in the 1880s and 1890s in Australia. I mean, we’re being fed this nonsense, people are paying for it, it’s destroying our manufacturing capacity all because of atrocious governments and people won’t hold these people accountable.
[Marcus] Well, there are some grave consequences, as you say, for these glaring errors and policies devised on numbers that are given by the Bureau of Meteorology, along with the CSIRO. So there we go, I’m glad we got you there asking these hard questions, Malcolm, but you don’t seem to get much support from those that are in power.
[Malcolm] That’s a really good point.
[Marcus] Why don’t you?
[Malcolm] Angus Taylor is the Minister for Energy.
[Marcus] Yes.
[Malcolm] He admits now, two or three weeks ago he admitted that he is afraid, he’s scared of what’s happening, with our reliability of power supply, security of power supply, the cost of power. He’s admitted all this. I know for a fact, in conversations with Angus Taylor, that he’s a sceptic about us affecting the climate, but he is peddling this nonsense.
Mark Butler, the former spokesman from the Labour Party, I’ve challenged him to a debate, ran away from me. I challenged The Greens 10 and a half years ago, and every day since I’ve been in the Senate, sorry, almost weekly since I’ve been in the Senate this time they’ve failed to provide the evidence.
There’s just a whole lot of groupthink. I wrote to about 20 MPS in senior positions, Labour, Liberal, National, and Greens, not one of them was able to provide me with any evidence that we have to have these policies, not one.
[Marcus] Now let’s move to Malcolm Turnbull. Hang on, there, Malcolm Turnbull, of course, former Prime Minister of Australia, claims that the demand for coal is declining, but no one has told Africa they’re building 1,250 more coal plants by the year 2030. Mines are devastating the landscape in the Hunter Valley. Well, is that true?
Reportedly more about his opposition perhaps to the Mount Pleasant coal mine and the extension plan for it which happens to be near Malcolm Turnbull’s own interest including a grazing property. The mining industry is shortening lives by reducing air quality, and taxpayers, of course, you say are left with huge environmental remediation bills covered by mining bonds. Now last week, I don’t know what was going on in the New South Wales government with the Liberals and Nationals appointing Malcolm Turnbull to this role.
You know, zero net emissions by 2050, we had Matt Kean at the centre of it all, and for some reason, somehow both John Barilaro and the Premier of New South Wales went along with this. There were a couple of dissenting voices, but Malcolm was apparently tipped to take this job. Then there was a massive back flip whether it came from pressure from the media or from One Nation’s Mark Latham. I’m not sure. I think it’s a mix of all of those.
[Malcolm] I think you’re right. Malcolm Turnbull has a lot of personal interests, of benefit to him and his family, from pushing their renewables bandwagon. He’s got no evidence, never has had any evidence for pushing their renewables. He’s got no evidence for having to shut down coal mines. And he himself attributed the dumping of his new job to Mark Latham and the right-wing media, but you know, that’s typical Malcolm Turnbull. He can’t look at his own policy and he can’t look at himself, and he’s become a pariah.
[Marcus] Yeah, look, I understand what you’re saying, I get that, but let’s be honest, he’s half right.
[Malcolm] In what way?
[Marcus] Well, of course, he’s right.
[Malcolm] In what way?
[Marcus] Well, until people down the road from us 2GB and the Telegraph and a few others started jumping up and down about it this was gonna go through. I mean, I would tend to think that unless there was a by-election just around the corner in the upper Hunter, perhaps this bloke, Malcolm Turnbull, might’ve gone on.
[Malcolm] Well, I’m not gonna argue with that, I think that you’re making some pretty good comments, but Malcolm Turnbull himself blamed Mark Latham for standing up and speaking the truth. That’s the pressure that Mark brings. Mark’s a very good speaker, he gets his facts and he went straight into bat. Barilaro and Berejiklian are the ones. How could they possibly sign off on this man, Turnbull, being put in this position? But think about this, Marcus.
[Marcus] Yeah.
[Malcolm] Australia’s total electricity coal-fired power station capacity in this country was 25.2 gigawatts in 2017. So it’s less than that now with the closure of a couple of coal-fired power stations in Victoria, it’s less than that. China alone opened 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants last year alone, so almost double what our total capacity is. The world has opened up 50.3 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity last year alone. India is opening up on average around 17 gigawatts. India itself and China are opening up combined about three times our total capacity of coal-fired power stations.
[Marcus] And the argument, of course, is, Malcolm, I do need to go, the argument, of course, is that if they don’t get our coal, they’ll get it from elsewhere.
[Malcolm] Correct.
[Marcus] Yeah, all right, mate, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.
[Malcolm] Okay, mate, you’re welcome.
[Marcus] Talk soon.
[Malcolm] See you, Marcus.
[Marcus] See you, mate. Bye-bye. There he is, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. Of course, David Lazell…
