Why Australia’s most prominent climate change deniers have stopped talking about the climate

Why Australia’s most prominent climate change deniers have stopped talking about the climate





Global heating sceptics now argue it is more palatable with the electorate to pivot from climate denialism to anti-renewable energy scepticism


The only regular meeting of Australia’s Saltbush Club takes place most Thursday evenings at a golf club in Five Dock, in Sydney’s inner west. The group’s founding members – a collection of the country’s most prominent and avid global heating deniers – include Gina Rinehart, the former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, former Business Council of Australia head Hugh Morgan, and Coalition MP Colin Boyce.

At Five Dock, the crowd is mostly old and mostly white. They sometimes host contrarian speakers. But about six years ago, this gathering of climate sceptics decided to stop talking publicly about the climate.


“We resolved to temporarily pivot from the climate debate and launch the Energy Realists of Australia to talk to people about matters that really concern them, like the price and security of power, instead of science,” said Rafe Champion, another Saltbush founder and a stalwart of the Five Dock meetup.

The idea, Champion wrote on his blog last month, was to target people using “evidence that they can understand, unlike the finer points of climate science”.

As Australia heads to a federal election, the results of that pivot have been writ large in the campaign. Both major parties notionally support the net zero emissions target. But the coal and climate wars have been replaced in some places by vehement anti-renewables campaigns.

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In some cases, campaigns and candidates opposing renewables have discussed renewable energy plans with members of the Saltbush Club, and others who outright deny the existence of a climate crisis.
A ‘national network’

The New South Wales northern rivers seat of Richmond was once National party heartland. In recent years the Nationals vote has crashed, while the Greens have come into contention with growing support around Byron shire.

The Nationals candidate, Kimberly Hone, told Sky News a few months ago her strategy was to stop the flow of Greens preferences electing Labor.

“We’ve got to make sure that we hinder that and we drop [the Greens] vote,” she said.

In 2023, Hone – whose old Twitter account includes links to articles suggesting temperature increases are a religious “blessing” – started a new venture called the Richmond Energy Forum, which hosted anti-renewables speakers in front of banners claiming wind turbines were “killing koalas”.

A few days later, Hone met Neil Killion – a Saltbush Club member and the organiser of the Gold Coast-based Climate and Energy Realists of Queensland – to discuss “cross-border team work on affordable and reliable energy”.

Hone posted a photograph of their meeting on her private Facebook page.

The next month, Killion spoke at a meeting in which he discussed the beginnings of a “national network” that would include old school climate deniers, anti-renewables campaigners and the remnants of the post-Covid freedom movement.

Tuned into the live feed were the moderator of the Facebook group “Australian Climate Skeptics”; Graham Young, the former Queensland Liberal vice-president and head of the Australian Institute for Progress; and Viv Forbes, the executive director of the Saltbush Club and a former coal mining executive who served as an ambassador for an international declaration claiming “there is no climate emergency” and that “CO2 is plant food”.

“A lot of the people in the freedom movement as a whole would be supportive of what we do,” Killion told those on the video call.

“All told it’s pretty impressive. All of us basically feel the same way, so this is, if you will, the first step in making this [national network] a reality.”

Later at the same meeting, Boyce said blackouts were “a big political opportunity” and that he had urged fellow MPs to adopt a “do-nothing strategy” that would allow power outages and build opposition to net zero policies.

Paul Williams, an associate professor in politics and journalism at Griffith University, says the climate wars are still “a salient issue among conservative or reactionary voters, particularly in the regions”.

But Williams says the primary issues for voters at the election are the cost of living and health.

“[The Coalition] will try to bring over working-class people … by cultivating a culture war. This is really Trojan horse stuff because they can’t win the economic war.

“I don’t think there are too many people who want to fight a legitimate climate change battle,” he says. “Interestingly, Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy is being framed in terms of the cost of living.”

‘Pink and green rats’

A few days after Anthony Albanese called the election, the Condamine branch of the Liberal party held an energy forum at Balgowlah on Sydney’s northern beaches.

The moderator, Steven Tripp, has been involved with the branch and is an organiser of the group Let’s Rethink Renewables. Tripp’s questions included asking panellists how we “combat the story, or the lie, that is being told to our younger generation that the world is coming to an end due to climate change”.

Tripp also asked: “Donald Trump has abandoned the Paris agreement, why won’t the Coalition?”

The Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan told the audience the 2020 election of Joe Biden (and Trump’s loss) had been key to the Coalition signing up to net zero emissions targets.

“It’s hard for me to answer why. Obviously I’ve taken a position against net zero and I did that long before Donald Trump was re-elected,” Canavan said.

“When we did sign up to net zero … [former prime minister] Scott Morrison told us we had to do that because Joe Biden was elected and he wanted to do it, which was strange to me because there were a lot of allegations of voting irregularities at that election … I can’t remember anyone saying that Australians voted.

“It really perplexes me that, hang on, shouldn’t we get to decide on that? We haven’t actually had an election to decide on whether we should support net zero. There hasn’t been a battle. We never asked. Both sides of politics signed up to it.

“It would be nice to have that political battle; I keep pushing for that.”

The Coalition campaign did not respond to questions, including about potential agitation from MPs to drop its net zero commitment, in line with Trump’s America.

Hone did not respond.

Those behind the Saltbush Club say the political tide turning in the US offers hope for an about-face in Australia, too.

“So far there is not much to show for our efforts but events are starting to move very quickly in the United States,” Champion wrote on his blog.

“We expect this will help us after the forthcoming national election when climate and energy realists in the Liberal party can speak freely.

“In the meantime, the pink and green rats in the Liberal ranks maintain their stranglehold on policy because polling indicates the people are not ready to be told the truth about climate and energy issues.”