Alan Jones: Australia’s national drought disaster just gets worse for Scott Morrison
Why is the government, which should be building dams, in thrall to the climate change gospel when scientists show no link between climate change and drought?
Opinion
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It may seem impossible to believe, but on the national disaster which is drought, the Morrison government goes from bad to worse.
Now the Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, who is calling himself the “Drought Minister”, says he “totally accepts climate change is leading to hotter days, meaning droughts and disrupted rainfalls”.
He has told farmers to “get on with it”, which is most probably a Littleproud version of “suck it up”.
Of course, when these lily-livered people say they “totally accept” climate change, they never tell you on what they base their acceptance.
Littleproud is joined, of course, by the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who has a stack of Greens voters in his electorate.
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And he tells us: “The science has told us,” and added that the government accepted “the science around climate change”.
The anti-Shorten vote at the last election was the consequence of a manifest rejection of the very position that Littleproud and Frydenberg are embracing.
And what “science” are we talking about?
Andrew Pitman, AO, is an atmospheric scientist.
He is currently the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence for Climate Extremes.
Prior to this, he was the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
In fact, in January this year, Professor Pitman was awarded an Order of Australia, AO, “for distinguished service to science as a leading researcher, particularly of climate systems and the environment”.
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Recently, Professor Pitman, at a Sydney University symposium, was asked a question about drought.
He replied, “This may not be what you expect to hear. But as far as the climate scientists know, there is no link between climate change and drought … that may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented, but there is no reason a priori (a Latin phrase which refers to knowledge that comes from the power of reasoning based on self-evident truths) why climate change should make the landscape more arid …”
Professor Pitman went on, “If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last 100 years, there is no trend in data. There is no drying trend … so the fundamental problem we have is we don’t understand what causes droughts. Much more interesting, we don’t know what stops a drought. We know it’s rain, but we don’t know what lines up to create drought-breaking rains.”
Don’t question the gospel
But don’t worry, Frydenberg and Littleproud, impotent to assist farmers suffering from drought, mouth the platitudinous rubbish that it is all a consequence of “climate change”.
But they are in good company and if you dare to disagree you will be vilified and banned.
This supposedly “academic” website, The Conversation, has banned the posting of comments which dispute man-made climate change.
The website says constructive discussions can no longer include “climate change deniers”. This outfit appears to be supported by leading universities. It is hard to believe an ostensible “academic” website could descend to this level.
But it is not the lone ranger.
The University of California has published a list of 386 international man-made climate change “sceptics” whose views, the university says, should not be published.
The reality is, science in relation to anything is never settled.
The scientific method is always that the hypothesis should be tested.
The 18th-century Enlightenment established scientific theory as no more than the best explanation we have for something at this time.
Scientific theory is never the “truth” but I suppose, if in politics, you have no answers to an issue, in this case drought, or what you are proposing is a grand deception, then you have to resort to the hoax of global warming.
And then when the planet is not warming, call it climate change.
So there they were, Frydenberg and Littleproud on a three-day drought tour. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money — I could name 10 farmers who would tell them what they need to know.
There is water and fodder which would keep stock alive but farmers don’t have the money to buy it or to freight it to where it is needed.
But how would these people have any idea?
They are politicians. They live in a taxpayer-funded dream world.
You think of the farmer, currently facing desperate life-threatening circumstances, who cannot sleep, gets up in the morning and wonders how he keeps his family and his stock alive.
I was with such farmers at the weekend.
Money for nothing
How would Frydenberg and Littleproud — and Morrison for that matter — have a clue?
The farmer has no money coming in.
But the taxpayer pays the politicians’ salaries.
The taxpayer pays for their car.
The taxpayer pays for their driver.
The taxpayer pays for their petrol.
The taxpayer pays for staff, which the farmer can no longer afford.
What chance would these people have of understanding what the farmer is going through?
Parliament decides — most of them have never been on a farm.
And then you get this bloke, McCormack, who is the Deputy Prime Minister.
It is a profound embarrassment.
He is the leader of the National Party.
It used to be the Country Party.
And he has talked about a National Water Grid Authority and he said it was “up and running”.
It will “bring experts together and take any politics out of the water infrastructure building task”.
Up and running?
It was to have begun operations on October 1.
It was to be a circuit-breaker to deliver more dams.
Well, October 1 has come and gone.
As of last week, the Authority had no one in charge and no so-called “experts”.
Its “Key People” website heading features one solitary name — a public servant who is reportedly only there in an “acting capacity”.
And no one, as of last week, including McCormack, could specify any “experts” who had advised or worked with the Authority.
Where are the dams?
And this farce is somehow supposed to reassure towns, about to run dry next month, with meaningless mumbo-jumbo from McCormack and his mates, and a new $100 million-dollar bureaucracy, all worthless.
But don’t worry, there is a $5 billion Future Drought Fund.
It will not be operative until 1 July next year.
But don’t worry, there is a Drought Response Fund of $4 billion.
But that money is not available because the legislation is stuck in the Senate.
And there are millions and millions of dollars donated by Australians and no one knows where the money is.
Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor’s shadow agriculture spokesman, has asked the Morrison government, where is the final report by the Co-ordinator General for Drought, Major General Stephen Day.
He was appointed in July last year.
But the Federal Agriculture/Drought Minister, David Littleproud, the climate change apologist, says the report is “subject to the deliberations of Cabinet” and “may be released at a later date”.
This is the so-called “response” to a national disaster where all the resources of the nation should be applied to save the farm and save the farmer.
But if you have nothing to offer except empty promises, I suppose you climb onto the climate change bandwagon, which I can assure you will take these people into political oblivion.
The Prime Minister is no better.
Give him five minutes and he will rattle off 21 “dams” that are currently being built or have been built since “we came to power”.
Well, doing a bit of homework helps.
I can assure you, none of those listed fits the category “currently being built or have been built”.
None.
The ignorance of government, being fed by the bureaucracy because they are too lazy to do some homework themselves, is most manifest in the announcement 10 days ago that the Morrison government would add 13 councils to the list of those eligible for funding under the Drought Communities Program.
One of them was the Moyne Shire in Victoria.
The local mayor responded, “How can we accept it … when there are northern farmers suffering dreadfully and we are not.”
You see, not only do they not know anything about drought, they know nothing about geography.
Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, according to the Morrison government is in drought; Singleton, next door, is not.
I suppose you could forgive all of these policy failures if the government was not so pig-headed.
But they know everything.
The farmers know they know nothing.
This drought is a national disaster.
It may be the worst on record.
It should be declared a national disaster so the nation’s resources can be applied to keeping rural Australia alive.
But it won’t happen.
Government, after all, always knows more than we do.