💧DUKE Clyde (HANSARD)CFW9 (Biden-Harris ELECT)💧 · @nobby15
4th Dec 2019 from TwitLonger
Mark Butler has told Guardian Australia that resources minister MC
Shadow climate change minister Mark Butler has told Guardian Australia that resources minister Matt Canavan “doesn’t even pretend to care about our international commitments” on climate change after the minister gave two interviews to climate science denier Alan Jones on Monday.
Jones asked the Queensland senator if he would be going to the UN climate talks that are underway in Madrid, but Canavan joked he had “got some better things to do” and that he had “not committed enough sins” to have been sent there.
Greens climate spokesperson Adam Bandt accused Canavan of engaging in “smug mockery”.
Canavan claimed terms like “climate emergency” were being forced upon members of the public, which he said was “Orwellian” and an attempt to shut down “alternative viewpoints”.
When asked on radio by Jones why he was not in Spain, a laughing Canavan said: “I’m sure it’s lovely this time of year but I’ve got some better things to do. I haven’t committed enough sins in my life to be sent there yet, Alan.”
Later on Sky, Jones again asked Canavan why he wasn’t in Madrid.
“Ha!,” said Canavan. “Well Alan, it would not exactly be how I would like to spend my Christmas let’s just say that, but good luck to all those beautiful people who aggregate there.”
“Obviously we need to have international meetings to discuss these things, but then there are all these hangers-on who seem to use this as a PR exercise to preen their moral vanity.”
In each interview Jones, who has described human-caused climate change as a hoax, promoted a climate science denial group known as Clintel, before then introducing the minister.
Clintel is promoting a declaration that “there is no climate emergency” and that “CO2 is plant food.”
Canavan did not comment on the Clintel group, which has signed support from more than 100 Australians, including Hugh Morgan, a former president of the Business Council of Australia, and Ian Plimer, a director on Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill Holdings iron ore project.
Queensland state MP Colin Boyce, of the LNP, is the only Australian elected official to have their name appear on the Clintel declaration.
Later in the Sky interview, Canavan said: “What’s wrong with this agenda that’s being pushed by some people going to these conferences is that they want to regulate what we say and do,” adding there was an attempt to “shut down debate.”
He said: “They are worried about alternative viewpoints. As you said in your intro we now have to call it a climate emergency.
“It is not enough to call it climate change or global warming or greenhouse gases of the ozone layer – it’s now a climate emergency. This is true Orwellian stuff that we have to use these kinds of terms.”
Canavan also used the interviews to heavily promote coal-fired power and coal generally, claiming coal generation was growing in other parts of Asia.
“We are as a government backing coal-fired power,” he told Jones on 4BC, adding the government was “progressing an option” for a new coal-fired power station at Collinsville in north Queensland.
Canavan said the renewable energy target had “destroyed our energy systems” and had been a “massive mistake”.
Butler told Guardian Australia Canavan’s comments on the climate talks “tells us everything we need to know about the Government’s attitude to action on climate change.
“Matt Canavan doesn’t even pretend to care about our international commitments under the Paris Agreement. The hard-right of the Coalition dictates Australia’s climate policy, as a result emissions are continuing to go up and our children will pay the price.”
Bandt said anyone attending the Madrid talks should be applauded, adding: “This smug mockery from the Minister for Coal is part of a broader assault on climate action by a government in the pocket of the polluters.”