Australia’s deputy prime minister has refused to say he accepts key findings of the latest global summary of climate science, declaring he won’t be “berated” or participate in a “kangaroo court”.
Barnaby Joyce, leader of the junior Coalition party whose agreement will be needed if Australia is to take a more ambitious climate policy to the Glasgow conference in November, said he would not yield to “straight-out bullying”.
“I can say and think what I like,” he said on Friday.
Joyce, who was reinstated as leader of the Nationals in June, likened basic questions about climate science to a baptism where parents were required to “denounce Satan and all his works and deeds”.
Joyce did not rule out the Nationals doing a deal with Scott Morrison’s Liberal party to firmly commit to net zero emissions by 2050, but said: “In any deal, I don’t start by saying what I think it’s worth, I start by saying how much do you want it?”
He said the prime minister – who has said it is his “preference” to achieve net zero by midcentury, and is facing increasing diplomatic heat from the UK and the US – was “giving his best endeavours to this process” but any long-term emissions strategy would require the “concurrence” of National party MPs and senators.
During a National Press Club event held at parliament house on Friday, Guardian Australia asked Joyce whether he accepted the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest reports.
He was presented with three statements from the IPCC’s 40-page summary for policymakers, including: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”
The other quotes from the report (pdf) were that human influence “has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years” and that global heating “of 1.5C and 2C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades”.
He was also asked whether he accepted that the intensity, frequency and duration of fire weather events were projected to increase throughout Australia – a form of words drawn from the IPCC’s two-page regional fact sheet on Australasia (pdf).
Asked whether he accepted that was our best understanding of the science, Joyce said: “I really don’t like when questions are presented like that, because it sounds like you’re at a baptism, on behalf of your child, denouncing Satan and all of his works and deeds, and on and on and on it goes.”
Joyce added: “If the question you ask me is I do I believe that humans have an influence on climate, yes I do.”
He did not specify how much of an influence he accepted humans had on the climate.
“And if you then walk into the frame of saying, ‘I’m now going to grab you by the ear and make you comply with everything I say’, I won’t do that because it’s a free nation. I can say and think what I like.”
Asked whether he had read the IPCC report, published early last month, Joyce said he had “been through whole sections of that report” but “this turns into this sort of parochial partisan process”.
He said he was “not going to stand here and sort of be berated into complying” with such statements.
“I’m not going to participate in some sort of kangaroo court of now you will agree to every statement I say because the IPCC said it,” Joyce said.
In response to a subsequent question from another journalist about a long-term emission reduction strategy, which the government has promised to unveil before the Glasgow summit, Joyce suggested regional Australia was “bruised and beaten by the Kyoto process”.
He said the Nationals would work to ensure that urban Australia, not regional Australia, paid the price “if there’s a price to be paid”.
“This is why in regards to the previous question [about climate science], why we get so annoyed, because people say you must comply with my assertion, and that therefore justifies everything that I want to do next, because otherwise I just go back to the initial statement and say but didn’t you say this, therefore you must comply with that,” Joyce said.
“And that’s bullying.”
The Australian government is yet to firmly commit to net zero emissions by 2050 or to deepen its Abbott-era emission reduction pledge for 2030, although some members of the Liberals are pressing for Morrison to increase Australia’s ambition.
Joyce defended coal and gas exports, saying it was a big export earner for Australia. He said it would be a “childish decision” to stop such exports while expecting to maintain the same standard of living.
In questioning Australians’ increasing reliance on solar power, Joyce also raised concerns over a key source material produced in China’s Xinjiang region.
His comments follow the Biden administration moving in June to ban US imports of a key solar panel material from a Chinese-based company over forced labour allegations.
Joyce questioned whether Australians thought about the polysilicon that was produced “by reason of the slave labour by the Uyghur people”.
He said: “When you go and turn on the lights, do you think slave labour?”
Joyce’s comments are starkly different from those of Morrison, who said last month that the government was “very aware of the risks that are set out in the IPCC report”. “The cost of inaction globally is very clear in what the IPCC report sets out today,” Morrison said at the time, and promised that the government would “set out a clear plan”.