The Nationals have long been the most prominent anti-science voice in Australian politics. The Liberal’s junior Coalition partner, which has become the mining industry’s voice in Canberra, bears significant responsibility for placing a handbrake on climate action.
The ego-driven coup which returned Barnaby Joyce to the party leadership was rationalised on the basis that Michael McCormack wasn’t vocal enough in his support for the resources sector. Sure.
But that pro-mining identity has come hand in hand with a hostility to environmentalism amid the Nationals ranks. And it’s increasingly being expressed as opposition to science itself, with Nationals MPs and Senators going particularly hard after one agency: the CSIRO.
It’s the organisation that Joyce falsely claims comes up with the plan for the government to reach net zero. But in reality, the Nationals don’t spend much time listening to the CSIRO, choosing instead to use it as a football in its endless culture wars over climate change.
Canavan leads the charge
It’s no surprise Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has led the charge against the CSIRO. The former resources minister relishes his role as the party’s unrestrained poster-in-chief. Attacking the CSIRO fits well with his “trigger the greenies” political agenda.
In March last year, with Australia reeling from a devastating black summer, Canavan used a Senate estimates hearing to accuse the agency of omitting evidence that the link between bushfires and climate change wasn’t established.
Like so many estimates hearings, it was a gotcha moment manufactured for social media and Sky News, where host Paul Murray had Canavan on to snigger at the CSIRO. Except just hours later, another scientific paper clearly established the links between global warming and bushfires.
The agency’s response to questions taken on notice from Canavan (which are so often ignored because written replies lack the theatrics of estimates), made it clear the senator was quoting from a 2015 publication. Since then, the CSIRO said, significant scientific progress had shown a clear trend toward more dangerous conditions in spring and summer and an earlier start to the fire season clearly linked to anthropogenic climate change.
Cananvan has had a few more cracks at the agency lately. In the June round of estimates hearings, he questioned the organisation about research conducted on bats, and ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been the centre of conspiracy theories that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab.
The CSIRO, responding to questions on notice, say they have no links with the Institute over the last five years, beyond two papers co-authored by scientists at the agency and Wuhan. What research the CSIRO had done with bats contributed to critical work on the hendra virus. But Canavan, aided by News Corp reporters, has continued to push the claim the agency had worked with the Wuhan institute with bats, creating an air of suspicion around its research.
Less meaty matters
Perhaps the weirdest source of tension between the Nationals and the CSIRO centres on the issue of meat. When the agency published a report into bugs as a an environmentally-friendly meat alternative, Canavan was again on the attack.
“It really bugs me that the CSIRO waste so much taxpayers’ money on the fantasy that we will all stop eating beef and start munching on what ends up on our windscreens,” he told The Courier-Mail.
Of course, whipping up a culture war around beef is red meat to the Nats’ base — they’ve recently managed to secure a Senate inquiry into the total non-issue of vegan alternative meat products.
This week, we got another classic example of this, as Agriculture Minister David Littleproud wrote a letter to the agency hitting out at their promotion of plant-based meat as part of National Science Week, on the basis that it was unfair to the meat industry.
“It is entirely unacceptable for the CSIRO to be advocating, or being perceived to be advocating for these products over genuine meat products,” Littleproud said.
The Nationals have a history of throwing agriculture under the bus, except for meat and cotton. Of course the reality that the vast majority of agriculture in Australia produces grain, vegetables and fruit. All of which are used in meat alternatives. Truth and the Nationals don’t co-exist.
Very true, Mr Dally,
As a party that’s supposed to represent all agricultural interests, they so often select one type of farming above another. As you say, meat alternatives are grown by farmers.
Back in the 1960s they did the same thing with butter vs margarine. Does anybody else remember the nonsense they came up with back then? They haven’t changed.
I have been wondering when someone was going to mention our very own home-grown (in Qld) nasty/lethal Hendra virus. When it broke out, all horse owners faced extreme quarantine measures to protect their horses and the humans who had close contact with them. There was a ‘horse’ lockdown to prevent the virus spreading. As we now know, bats are a host for this virus and it is easily spread to horses then humans.Canavan is a disgrace. Is he the latest dangerous virus to come out of Qld?
It’s their disregard for their kid’s futures that I find most curious…. that and how anyone could vote for a party with those sorts of obvious priorities. After all, it’s not just “their kids”.
Always staggers me that the farmers vote for this rabble. I suppose they’re rusted on and still believe fairy tales. Heaven forbid they think about Labor or the Greens!
They believe in perpetual growth, perpetual supply of resources and perpetual selling of their products. Science is useful for animal and agricultural products but only if it assists with the above. Not all of them of course – there is a smallish group that believes in climate change.
Understanding how increasing CO2 causes climate change doesn’t require belief. It requires acceptance of rigorous and peer reviewed science. Belief is for superstitions such as belief in an invisible deity.
Actual farming populations are declining in many regional electorates (with consolidation and/or smaller families) while regional urban centres maybe growing in comparison, hence, different interests and motivations.
True, but Shooters Fishers Farmers have taken seats off the Nationals because – horror of horrors – they actually represent agricultural interests. For example, SFF actually oppose fracking on agricultural land, because they have sensibly concluded that you can’t grow wheat or tend sheep in an offshore oil well.
The pandemic is not just disrupting the way we work, with the mass exodus of metro folk to regional areas because they can work remotely, will also come a fresh take on voting preferences in these regional areas. I think the next election will be very interesting indeed.
I’ve held that belief in demographic changes for quite a while – since the hippies discovered the northern rivers region.
The last couple of state elections have threatened the gNats hold on Lismore – saved only by cow cockies of Casino…and worse.
Leaving aside Stockholm Syndrome, the constant pork barrelling is hard to gainsay when it is your rutted 50kms link road that gets graded, hell maybe even sealed.
Orange is rapidly becoming a university town, a new base hospital with an adjancent complex full to bursting with specialists.
Given that the higher ed & uni sector is well established now Armidale’s conversion should be along any …year now.
If only there were something for Dubbo.
“High School Never Ends”. It’s true. The slightly slow ones, who come bottom of the class in maths and english, and forced to give up science half way through high school because they couldn’t keep up. Desperate to be ‘cool kids’ they are keen to make out that ‘science is rubbish anyway’ and that the people who succeed in the difficult subjects are ‘geeks’, ‘uncool’; needing to be rubbished so that he and his bully mates can appear to be useful. The reckoning comes when school ends… where can these useless tools actually get a job? Not much of a choice. Depending on how good a talker you are, the options are: 2nd hand car sales, real estate sales, or politician! Yay no lack of talent gets wasted.
They get jobs as furniture sales staff and in advertising.
Full potential. A big mess. Hyping up to du.b down. How’d the education system get sucked into that vortex-t. CSIRO. Well CSIRO is liberal National party. Always has been. So don’t get too caught up in that apparent division. God, christanity and csiro go hand in hand. Has do e for many years.