There was important news two days ago on 9Oct19 from the Hon Joel Fitzgibbon MP, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources, Member for Hunter, New South Wales, a coal mining electorate. In a speech to the Sydney Institute Joel suggested Labor should adopt a carbon emission target for 2030 of a 28% reduction, the top of the Coalition 26-28% range. So in effect there would be “bi-partisanship” around Australia’s 2030 emission target which would make it harder for the Govt to attack Labor on that issue.
Usually in Labor politics these issued are resolved quietly in “smoke filled rooms” away from public ken.
I have not seen any sign that Labor will adopt Joel’s idea – however Parliament sits next week so it will be interesting to see what happens. Govt could attack Labor on the “split” at question time using Dorothy Dixers.
Hunter voting – large chart – easy to see what bugged Joel with PHON votes rocketing to 21.6%. Mr Stuart Bonds the One Nation candidate. 2PP chart. 
So it looks possible that if PHON had the rusted on organization of the big parties, like people at all booths handing out cards, campaigning resources, attending all the “homes” where people find it hard getting out, signage, free transport for the elderly etc, Joel could have been a goner.
Now the Govt. is also split on Emissions policy with The Guardian claiming six Lib MP’s have signed to
cross-benchers “Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action”. So now there are “two splits” – an interesting
week coming up in Canberra Parliament. BTW a quick look at the Distribution of Preferences chart from the
AEC suggests to me that Joel was elected by a 28.9% leakage of One Nation prefs to Labor on the 7th count. See AEC Prefs Chart
If that leakage had been halved – the Nat. candidate might have been elected.
Wow that was close for Joel last time. His TPP margin was lower than in 2013 – a coalition landslide which he would have hoped represented his rock-bottom support. Thank heavens he is now sitting up and listening.
Funny though how the media still manages to convince the chattering classes that “climate change action” is overwhelmingly popular. In practice, support for it quickly evaporates once the consequences – job losses and blackouts – become apparent.
Wazza:
Do you get The Australian? Maurice Newmann has stirred the pot, calling for an inquiry into the BoM.
The paywall parted for me. A good read.
Things hotting up at Bureau of Meteorology 14th October 2019 Maurice Newman
www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/things-hotting-up-at-bureau-of-meteorology/news-story/a453a2b2dab28c53ce1df57bdc85e98b
Why is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology a protected species? How many warnings does the government need before it conducts a parliamentary inquiry and independent audit.
Surely, for $1m a day, taxpayers are at least entitled to reliable data. Yet what we get are homogenised records achieved by mixing, matching and even deleting temperature data, often from unreliable or geographically unrelated sites and almost always with a warming bias.
In 2015 minister for the environment Greg Hunt saw off a golden opportunity when he batted away then prime minister Tony Abbott’s wish to have an audit. Hunt found the bureau’s “hard science, hard data and literally millions of points of information through satellite and local monitoring” convincing.
Hunt’s successor, Josh Frydenberg, similarly refused to have an audit. Both turned a blind eye to the BoM’s unscientific obsession to report record heat.
When satellite data conflicted with its “hottest-ever summer” hype, they ignored it. And they listened to colleagues and BoM supporters who were consumed by climate-change politics.
The bureau’s focus on politics rather than science was revealed a decade ago in the leaked “Climategate” emails which exposed unscientific practices and appalling quality control.
Professor Phil Jones, former director at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, referred to Australians “inventing the December 1995 monthly value” and wanting to see “the section on variability and extreme events beefed up”.
A frustrated CRU climatologist/programmer, Ian (Harry) Harris, wrote: “Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. So many new stations have been introduced, so many false references … so many changes that aren’t documented.”
The bureau’s supervisor of climate analysis, Dr David Jones, dismisses sceptics as “scientifically incompetent. We have a policy of providing any complainer with every single station observation when they question our data (this usually snows them)”.
Former chief executive Rob Vertessy confirms this thinking, saying: “People … running interference on the national weather agency are unproductive and, it’s actually dangerous.”
This patronising fortress mentality does little to dispel concerns about integrity.
The BoM’s casual approach to Celsius conversion with its warming bias sticks in the memory. So too the spectacle of Rutherglen, where a 0.35C cooling became a 1.73C warming. When hot and dry Hillston, 300km away in southern New South Wales, is included in the “homogenisation” process, no wonder.
There’s also the mystery of Goulburn Airport, in NSW southern tablelands, where the lowest ever July temperature was -9.1C, recorded in 1988. In 2017 that was broken when the temperature dropped to -10.4C. The bureau recorded -10C. A similar under-recording occurred at Thredbo Top Station.
After an inquiry from Frydenberg, the BoM responded there were issues with those automatic weather stations but, out of 695 sites, they were the only ones where temperature records had been affected. How reassuring that the ever-alert Dr Jennifer Marohasy, who raised the alarm, had found the offending two.
Respected climate writer Joanne Nova recently reported another example of the bureau’s reluctance to record cooler temperatures. Although Friday, April 19, was the coldest April day in Albany, Western Australia, the bureau somehow “lost” the crucial Albany Airport data set.
So, while temperatures for hundreds of kilometres around registered similar maximums to the airport’s 10.4C, the official airport maximum for April 19 remains blank, while the city of Albany records the day before’s temperature of 25.1C.
The bureau’s warming bias is shameless. It couldn’t wait to announce January 7 last year as the Sydney Basin’s hottest-ever day. But it was required to quickly retract this and acknowledge 1939 was hotter — but not before the captive media had sensationalised the headlines.
Suspicions of BoM neglect and carelessness are being confirmed by diligent volunteer auditors. A number of weather stations have been found on or near asphalt, busy highways, beside galvanised iron fences and metal sheds, atop tin roofs or adjacent airconditioning units. Even when these sites are not included in the official ACORN set, they are still used to adjust temperatures within it.
Now, Nova reveals, volunteers have discovered changes at the Port Hedland site have over the years corrupted its data. It is one of only 112 certified locations and its temperatures are used in the “best practice” official set which forms part of the global record. How many more non-compliant, certified sites are there? And why is it only volunteers can find them?
And why, to quote Nova: “After all the headlines, after it was measured on supposedly modern first-class equipment, even data just 18 months old is being re-fiddled?”
So when satellites suggest 1991 was our hottest summer, and the bureau says 2019, who should we believe?
The BoM is a large and expensive agency, employing almost 1700 people. It requires $400m a year to run. The importance of its database and the reliability of its forecasts go well beyond daily bulletins. Many industries depend on them. Yet, despite the bureau’s boasts of scientific integrity, government cannot ignore the continual release of conflicting evidence nor the BoM’s repeated failure to predict catastrophic weather events such as floods and droughts.
Moreover, despite the bureau’s protests of “best practice”, evidence is being produced which questions the bureau’s compliance with World Meteorological Organisation standards.
The bureau rejects this but then this question may fall into the “unproductive” and “actually dangerous” category.
If the bureau was a public company ASIC would have long since investigated it. What makes government so frightened to act?
The current pollies on both sides of the barged wire fence love getting stuck into the Big 4 banks.
I think the bank’s behaviour is exemplary in comparison with BoM.
Too right mate, toorightmate!
Also, the banks are in business. Disciplining them is mainly the job of consumers, who can pull their business and go elsewhere if they are dissatisfied. But the BoM is a government monopoly, supported by taxpayers. When well-founded concerns are raised about the objectivity and reliability of its work, only a public inquiry can either allay or justify those concerns, and identify necessary corrections and improvements to what it is doing.
Well put Beachgirl.
Can you or Waz or anyone else recall what Greg Hunt’s thesis from his uni days was? I thought it was about Carbon markets or some such. If that is the case it would bring into question his objectivity, in my opinion.