Dear Prime Minister….

To: The Hon. Tony Abbott MP
From: Des Moore, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
Case Smit, Director, Galileo Movement

A petition from Australian citizens recently has been presented in Parliament requesting an inquiry into the costs of government expenditures and policies covering a wide range of activities designed to reduce Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.  This inquiry must also enumerate the benefits that are being provided from these expenditures.

Some estimates put the annual cost at around $15 billion, but no definitive figures have been published.  Is it not perfectly reasonable for Australia’s taxpayers to be told in a clear, factual way what benefits they are gaining from expenditures of the taxes they pay?

In its recent report, the Productivity Commission urges the Government to “introduce stringent cost-benefit analysis” for projects; which is precisely what the petition requests.  Even the Chair of the Climate Change Authority questions whether the Government’s actions are in the best interest of the community –although he mistakenly seeks much greater reductions in emissions.

Many Australians believe that “taking action on climate” is akin to H.C.Andersen’s story about the emperor’s new clothes.  We are being told that taking “action on climate change” now will prevent  a “catastrophic” increase in global temperature sometime in the increasingly distant future.  Are Australia’s efforts of any value when China, India, Germany, Japan and other countries are actually increasing their carbon dioxide emissions and when there is virtually no chance of reaching a substantive global agreement on reductions?  Would Australia simply be helping to fund the emperor’s (invisible) new clothes?

Many of Australia’s genuinely independent scientists judge the analysis and data published by the IPCC, and largely adopted by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO without question, are grossly misleading.  Even the American Physical Society has started to formally examine alternative views.  To sort out the differences between the various views, the requested inquiry would justify being in the form of a Royal Commission to ensure that evidence is given under oath.

We urge you to take the requested action and not to let the petition gather dust in the Minister for the Environment’s office, as it has the potential to save the Government many billions of dollars and to alleviate current adverse effects on our economy.

Sincerely,

Des Moore and Case Smit