Transcript - MTR 1377 - 23 March 2011
23 Mar 2011
Transcipt SUBJECTS: Use of the term climate change deniers
STEVE VIZARD:
Well the man who made that accusation of the Prime Minister Christopher Pyne joins me now, Christopher thanks for your time.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Pleasure Steve.
VIZARD:
On reflection did we all know that? Was she trying to allude to the Holocaust?
PYNE:
Look there's no doubt at all that Julia Gillard is dog whistling on the issue of calling people climate change deniers. She knows full well that the connotation in people's mind is with Holocaust deniers. It is offensive to use the Holocaust as she has to try and make a political point, and as a long standing supporter of the state of Israel and the Jewish people, I find it deeply offensive that she would continue to use the term which she knows, and the press gallery knows, and the Labor caucus knows, is designed to suggest that anybody who dares to question the science of climate change is akin to a Holocaust denier.
VIZARD:
So you don't resile from your position. Let me put to you a counter argument Christopher that I think a lot of people including me, and I saw what happened yesterday wouldn't have jumped to that conclusion. A counter position is by you raising that connection you've actually brought the Holocaust, at least for those who hadn't made that connection, into the debate about climate change.
PYNE:
Well in politics sometimes you've got to bell the cat. She's been trying to get away with this for a long time. On the Labor party's website there is a column by Mark Dreyfus referring to Tony Abbott as being Goebbels like, the famous Nazi propagandist. There is a pattern in the Labor party of saying that if you don't agree with them on their carbon tax you are a freak, a fantasist, a dungeons and dragons extremist, that is what one Labor back bencher's described people that are turning up to the anti-carbon tax rally today; he's said it has all the credibility of a dungeons and dragons convention. The Labor party is so desperate and in so much trouble because of this bad tax built on a lie that they are trying to disparage anybody who doesn't agree with them. I believe in climate change and I believe it's being caused and contributed to by human beings, but it's also a democracy Steve, people are entitled to believe whatever they want to without being humiliated, mocked, disparaged and likened to Holocaust deniers.
VIZARD:
Now I want to play you what the Prime Minister has just said this morning, she's obviously had time to sleep on your response, she's had time to get her researchers and some of her team out, they've looked back through Hansard, they've looked back through records, here's what the Prime Minister said about that matter just a few minutes ago:
Julia Gillard: John Howard used the terminology "climate change denier". The terminology climate change denier is very commonly used; people would read it in the newspaper every day of the week. I'll stop calling Tony Abbott a climate change denier when he stops denying the science of climate change.
VIZARD:
Well let's just address that, did John Howard call people climate change deniers, did he begin the phrase?
PYNE:
Well what Julia Gillard has just said, that you've replayed is a bald faced lie in any event because Tony Abbott has not denied the science of climate change; he has said time and time again that he believes the climate is changing and that humans have contributed to it. Julia Gillard is a past master of telling one bald faced lie after another and the more she repeats it, she believes the more people will believe it. Now sometimes you have to in politics hang a lantern on a problem and I am not going to resile from the fact that Julia Gillard uses the term climate change denier to suggest that anybody who doesn't agree with her about her carbon tax is somehow akin to a holocaust denier.
VIZARD:
Just to address that first point though Christopher, she said, and I'm sure that you would have looked this up, that John Howard used the term climate change denier, would you accuse John Howard of wrongly making that connection with the holocaust?
PYNE:
John Howard is not the Prime Minister, he has not been the Prime Minister for over three years, it's high time people moved on from talking about what other political figures have said in the past. I don't believe that people who question the science to climate change should be accused of being climate change deniers whether John Howard said it, Julia Gillard said it, or anybody else says it.
VIZARD:
Are you going to attend the rally today on the steps of Parliament, Christopher?
PYNE:
No, I'm preparing for Question Time.
VIZARD:
Christopher, thanks for your time today and I look forward to this, I think there's still a fair way to go on this and, incidentally, do you say that the term climate change denier can't be used in the English language anymore, that effectively, because of the way its been used in the past it is now removed from human discourse?
PYNE:
No, what I'm saying is that Julia Gillard who is a past master of politics and using the English language and is deliberately accusing members of the Coalition of being climate change deniers because she wants the public to think that that is as ludicrous as being a holocaust denier.
VIZARD:
Good on you Christopher, I appreciate your time, that's Christopher Pyne Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training.
[ends]