Dissenting report from Senator Matt Canavan

Introductory comments

1.1This inquiry was conducted in a way which proved that it was not about a genuine effort to improve the accuracy of public dialogue but, instead, it was an attempt to bully and cajole people into silence. I have never seen a greater abuse of the Senate’s purpose. Our Parliament should be the vehicle through which the people can challenge and critique the Government. Instead, with a Labor-Green majority in the Senate, this inquiry became the vehicle through which the politicians criticised the people.

1.2The way our system works is if things are not working, and they are clearly not working at the moment, then the people get to elect new politicians. The way Labor and Green politicians conducted themselves in this inquiry showed that they would like to elect a new people.

1.3There was an in-built ignorance in this inquiry about what is the nature of truth. This inquiry was conducted on the premise that there are certain inviolable truths about the workings of our planet, the precise impact of the burning of fossil fuels and even the cost of different energy technologies. But there was no attempt to establish how we know these things. Apart from a naïve repetition of the tired phrase ‘trust the science’, there was little interest in understanding what science is.

1.4Science is the investigation of the workings of our natural world. Science, like the natural world itself, is constantly changing. Understanding how we know about the natural world is not science, it is a branch of philosophy or, in technical terms, epistemology. This discipline traces its origins back to Plato’s Apology in which he quotes Socrates as saying that:

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

1.5Unfortunately, this inquiry was conducted with the ignorant assumption that the Government knows everything, and the Science leaves no question unanswered. However, what marks science apart from many other academic disciplines, say mathematics, is that the conclusions are constantly changing. Only a fool would posit that today’s scientific ‘truths’ will remain the same in a century’s time.

1.6Thomas Kuhn, one of the most influential modern philosophers of science, established the theory that science progresses through ‘paradigm shifts’.[1] In any one time, there are a set of agreed principles established through the consensus of the scientific community. However, as anomalies emerge in the prevailing theory, new paradigms emerge to challenge the existing consensus. Eventually, there is a scientific revolution that replaces the existing theories with a new understanding. This is most starkly seen in the progression from Newtonian to relativistic physics in the early 20th century.

1.7As Thomas Kuhn argued, science does not progress linearly through the mere accumulation of facts. The point being that it is the very existence of non-conforming, or heterodox, theories is how scientific knowledge progresses.

1.8The heart of this inquiry’s approach has been to supress, ridicule and silence anyone who expresses different views from the current scientific consensus. While I am sure that the Labor and Green Senators believe that in doing this, they are defending science, they are instead defeating it because it is the openness to have ideas challenged and critiqued that has allowed our scientific knowledge to rapidly advance.

1.9What is strange about this inquiry’s approach is that we have had a real-world experience of problems of silencing criticism during the COVID pandemic. During COVID, governments did censor views that were different from those of the medical authorities. The Australian Government censored over 4000 social media posts criticising government policies during the pandemic.[2] Social media companies aggressively censored people for de-claiming that COVID started in a lab, that the AstraZeneca vaccine was dangerous, that none of the vaccines stopped transmission and that lockdowns were too costly.

1.10Many of the views that Government officials and social media companies took regarding COVID are now known to be wrong or at least the subject of legitimate debate. In the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, it has now been de-listed. If governments had allowed more criticism, many of the costs of COVID may have been avoided. We are still dealing with the rampant inflation that was unleashed because governments panicked and kept the country locked down for too long.

1.11You would think that having had this recent experience of the failures of censorship we would be cautious about repeating the same mistakes. But instead, the recommendations of this inquiry seek to double down and supress criticism of the government’s climate policies just as had been done with government climate policies. This is even, or perhaps it is because, the government’s climate policies are clearly failing with energy prices skyrocketing (despite claims that renewable energy is the cheapest form of power) and industries are being lost to other countries not taking climate change action.

1.12What was even worse about this inquiry’s efforts were that often the targets of suppression were not those engaged in academic debate but simple community members who were opposed to the industrial development of rural areas. Most people opposed to the rollout of large scale solar and wind projects do not subscribe to any views on climate change science. They are just opposed to the destruction of the Australian bush. This is demonstrated by the range of opposition across the political spectrum to these projects, which includes former leaders of the Greens party and the Chair of this inquiry. You do not need to descend into the knots of conspiracy theories about fossil fuel industry funding or the control of our debate by right-wing forces, to understand why there might be opposition to the construction of a 300-metre wind turbine next door to someone’s house.

1.13Because it was clouded by the fog of conspiracy theories, this inquiry often found itself in the position of taking the side of multi-national solar and wind developers over small community groups who just want to defend the relaxing ambience of their country communities.

1.14There was a huge interest from the public in this inquiry. Only 243 submissions were accepted and published.While many thousands of emails were received, these were deemed to be ‘campaign’ emails, and, in line with the standard practice of most committees, these were not published or accepted as individual submissions.

1.15My office received almost 6000 emails from people across Australia expressing their view that this inquiry was nothing more than a means to silence, shun and ignore those in the community who dare to question the man-made impact of climate change and the Labor government’s obsession with net zero.

1.16While I appreciated the opportunity to participate as a member of the committee, in my view it was always going to be a one-sided inquiry from the get-go.It saw some witnesses being verballed by aggressive committee members and others afforded a level of ‘witness protection’ by these same committee members.Some senators asking questions were not afforded due respect for their line of questioning.

1.17The inquiry was interrupted by claims and counterclaims from submitters and witnesses against each other, within and outside of the formal inquiry proceedings.

1.18Through the process, the Committee secretariat remained professional and diligent in its support of the committee through 10 public hearings, and I commend them for producing a substantive report and thank them for their patience through often trying hearings.

1.19However, because of the overall bias inherent in the conduct of this inquiry (which was not the fault of the secretariat) I cannot support the recommendations of this inquiry. The one useful conclusion of the inquiry, however, was that the enormous amount of funding that goes to environmental and activist organisations deserves greater scrutiny.

1.20In its submission, the Page Research Centre claimed that over $108 million in foreign funding from international foundations (like the Sunrise Project and Greenpeace) has supported Australian campaigns aimed at dismantling the social license of coal and disrupting energy markets.[3]

1.21In its submission, Coal Australia stated:

‘We believe that guarding against climate change and energy misinformation – including through foreign funded and aided environmental activism and climate change and energy misinformation – would be maximized by a regular report to Parliament from those agencies charged with national security, intelligence and oversight of elections.’[4]

1.22Unfortunately, this inquiry did not adequately investigate these substantive claims and failed to call many of the activist groups that would seem to be funded from overseas sources invested in the rollout of renewable energy and related climate change policies. For that reason, I have not come to detailed conclusions about these matters. However, it would be useful for a future inquiry to look further into these issues and specifically whether the laws we have passed restricting the foreign funding of Australian politics are being subverted.

Senator the Hon Matthew Canavan

The Nationals

Senator for Queensland

Footnotes

[1]The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

[2]Kenny, C. 2023, ‘Many censored social media posts did not contain Covid-19 misinformation’, The Australian, 21 July.

[3]Page Research Centre, Submission 140, p.13.

[4]Coal Australia, Submission 64, p.3.