Bolt Report

SUBJECTS:  Climate Action; Repeal of Labor’s Carbon Tax; Operation Sovereign Borders

ANDREW BOLT:

Joining me is Christopher Pyne, Education Minister and leader of the House. Christopher, if John Howard didn’t believe in the warming scare, should he have given into it in 2007?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well Andrew, that’s a matter for John Howard to answer. I think most people believe the climate is changing, and we need to do something about it. Now, the policies that we are bringing forward – the direct action plan – is a good policy whether you believe in climate change or not, because who could be against planting more trees, better technology, and better farming practices? So what we’ve managed to craft is a policy for climate change which is something that everybody can support.

ANDREW BOLT:

Well, I’m just wondering if you, like John Howard – do you really believe, you know, that crops will fail, dams will empty, cities drown – all that apocalyptic stuff that John Howard said was over the top?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well I’ve never believed in the apocalyptic predictions of some of our more extreme scientists. I’ve never believed that. I remember one, particularly, who said that the Murray Mouth would never open again. And as a South Australian, I can tell you the Murray Mouth’s wider than I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime – at least anecdotally, from flying over it back into Adelaide, and out of Adelaide quite often. So I’ve never believed that. But I do believe that the climate is changing, and I’m sure there are things that we can do to ensure that the – we have a future with plenty of agriculture, plenty of food production, through good farming practices, planting more trees, and better technology. And why wouldn’t we want to put less pollution into the climate, regardless of whether you believe that CO2 is doing the planet damage or not?

ANDREW BOLT:

I’m so disappointed you call carbon dioxide pollution. I mean, that’s the kind of alarmist nonsense that I don’t think the Liberal Government should be doing. The International Panel on Climate Change is holding its annual climate change talks in Poland this week. You guys aren’t even sending a junior Minister. Is that because these talks are going nowhere?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well Andrew, the Parliament’s sitting this week, and the place for Ministers and Cabinet Ministers is in the Parliament when it sits. So that’s why they’re not going. Most people are saying that these talks in Warsaw aren’t expected to lead to any resolution, and the Coalition believes in more doing, rather than more talking. Now, the left in this country usually believe that conferences are a substitute for action. We don’t believe that.

ANDREW BOLT:

Well, the first item of business when Parliament resumes on Tuesday will be the repeal of the carbon tax. But I don’t understand why you guys don’t tell the most obvious truth about the carbon tax – and your own policies, I might add – that the carbon tax is all pain for no gain, and would not cut the world’s temperature by anything, anything more than 0.004 of 1 degree. That doesn’t seem to be much at all – why don’t you say so?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well the carbon tax has been a terrific con, there’s no doubt about that, Andrew. The carbon tax has been a con from start to finish. It’s claimed the careers of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, and now it looks set to claim the career of Bill Shorten, who doesn’t have the strength to stand on his own two feet as a new leader of the Labor Party. He wants to be a carbon copy of his predecessors. Unfortunately –

ANDREW BOLT:

Now I like the line ‘carbon copy’. I like the line, Christopher. My question really was why don’t you guys say your carbon tax wouldn’t cut the world’s temperature by anything more than 0.004 of a degree by the end of the century? Why don’t you just say that?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well, we have –

ANDREW BOLT:

Is that because they’ll say “Nor will yours”?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

We have said that, Andrew. What we’ve said is that –

ANDREW BOLT:

0.004 of 1 degree.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well, I haven’t necessarily used those words, Andrew, no. But I’m not going to have words put in my mouth. The truth is we’ve said that the carbon tax will see emissions rising in Australia – even on the Labor Party’s own graphs and figures, their emissions increase, in spite of the carbon tax, over the coming years.

ANDREW BOLT:

I’m just running out of time, so, but one – before I go, Indonesia this week refused to take back asylum seekers – on an Indonesian boat, in Indonesian search-and-rescue territory – was this punishment for Australia spying on Indonesia?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

No, I don’t think so. The recovery of our border protection, which has been so traduced by the Labor Government, is not going to be a straight line, Andrew. There will be times when it zigzags in different directions, because that is the nature of this very complicated process. But the number of boat arrivals have dropped by 75% since the Coalition was elected. The message is out there. Boats have been turned back. Sometimes it won’t work that way, and those people who have come to Christmas Island will go straight to Manus Island or Nauru – they will never set foot in this country. There’s no doubt that we’ve sent a strong message – a very strong message which is being heeded by the people smugglers. We have a very important relationship with Indonesia. We’re not going to turn that relationship into a circus the way Kevin Rudd did, with boats being – travelling around the Archipelago of Indonesia, looking for a port to land in, or smashing the live cattle export industry on the basis a one ABC television report. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to act as an adult, sensible Government, and we hope that ‘Electricity Bill’ will do that this week, and support the abolition of the carbon tax.

ANDREW BOLT:

Christopher Pyne, thank you so much for joining me.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Pleasure.

Ends