The Coalition and One Nation have cemented their position as science denialists, having spent Monday badgering some of Australia\u2019s peak scientific bodies over the validity of Great Barrier Reef health findings during a Liberal-called Senate inquiry, the Greens said.
\nCo-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, Queensland Senator Larissa Waters, said the inquiry is nothing more than a political ploy to attempt to advance the Coalition\u2019s position ahead of the Queensland state election, and further its culture war against science.
\n\u201cThe Reef is being used as a pawn for\u00a0flagrant state electioneering. This inquiry is about state regulations, but these regulations are being probed at a federal level,” she said.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a futile exercise.\u00a0We listened to One Nation ask one witness \u2018what is science?\u2019 in an attempt to discredit the findings from peak scientific bodies. We listened to a Coalition Senator also rebuke these findings as \u2018concocted science\u2019 and \u2018false evidence\u2019.”
\n\u201cPeer-reviewed science should not be debated by non-scientifically trained politicians trying to suit the agenda of big donors and dinosaur backbenchers.”
\n\u201cWe need strong laws to set the standards and give our Reef the best shot, and farmers should be financially assisted to meet these strong requirements,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cThe science is clear, we must act now for our best chance to protect the Reef and the more than 64,000 jobs that rely on it.
\n\u201cWe need urgent climate action, a transition off coal to renewable energy, and strong action on water quality to save what\u2019s left of our Reef,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Coalition and One Nation have cemented their position as science denialists, having spent Monday badgering some of Australia\u2019s peak scientific bodies over the validity of Great Barrier Reef health findings during a Liberal-called Senate inquiry, the Greens said. Co-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, Queensland Senator Larissa Waters, said the inquiry is nothing more … Continue reading “Government continues attack on Reef science”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}