On Tuesday 9 December, I gave a speech in Parliament about the shocking climate misinformation in education materials produced by Queensland Museum with funding from Shell.
You can read my full speech below, or in the official record of parliamentary proceedings (Hansard).
Mr Deputy Speaker Krause, you have young children of your own, so I think this an apt question for you and any other members in this House. Would you be okay with your kids’ science lessons being sponsored and shaped by a fossil fuel company? Shell is funding educational materials for Queensland kids that includes their corporate branding, outdated scientific data and misleading information on climate change. This is happening under the guise of a national sponsorship agreement with the Queensland Museum. Shockingly, some of these materials are being removed from the Queensland Museum’s website, so I thought I would bring them to the attention of the House before they disappear altogether.
I will start with ‘Introduction to Ocean Acidification’ which, as we can see here, has the Shell QGC logo on the front. The unbelievable irony of them including not just their corporate materials but also, if we turn to page 9 of this document, they exclaim to everyone’s shock and horror ‘poor Nemo’ when they discuss the effects of ocean acidification on the anemone that Nemo lives in. As though they care.
‘Poor Nemo!’ You can see the crocodile tears.
I move to page 13 of the document, where these guys are actually asking children to come up with their own carbon capture and storage solution. It is unbelievable. Maybe most unbelievable of all is that there is not a single mention of fossil fuels in this entire document which talks about carbon dioxide and ocean acidification. It is absolutely unbelievable. I table that for the benefit of the House.
I go to the second document, titled ‘Changing Climates, Changing Waters’. This one takes us through some potentially useful information about rising sea levels, more intense rainfall events, consequences for flooding, more droughts, more bushfire weather, warmer and more acidic oceans and more frequent sea level extremes, but there is still not a single mention of fossil fuels in this entire document. In fact, I could not help but gag a little bit getting to the end of this document and seeing they had interviews with two staff from the Queensland Museum. There is no mention of fossil fuels, yet they asked these two Museum staff what actions they take personally to reduce their carbon footprint. The carbon footprint is the biggest sham that the fossil fuel industry has ever come up. They are not just greenwashing in here but trying to ignore their own responsibility and foist responsibility on to young children in their learning. It is an absolute joke, with no mention of fossil fuels. I table that for the benefit of the House.
Page 7 of the final document I will refer to today tells us that the climate has warmed by 0.7 of a degree in the last century—never mind that it has actually risen by more like 1.2 degrees up until today. It asks students to focus on warming over the last 5,000-year period—never mind the immediate future that they will inherit and for which they will have responsibility managing increasing natural disasters. In amongst all of the 10 pages of this document, I think one out of seven mentions of the word ‘fossil’ refers to fossil fuels but it is in this context where they guide teachers to ‘conclude this activity with a discussion about how individuals, the local community, Australia and the international community are
reducing their reliance on fossil fuels and combatting climate change’. It is disgraceful. You cannot make this up. I table that document.
I have run out of time to go through all of the content they include in this nonsense, but I will also table this Comms Declare report generated this month.
It goes into a lot more detail about the misinformation and greenwashing that we have seen from Shell in concert with the Queensland Museum. This is a disgraceful conflict of interest. Shell is one of the 10 largest polluting companies in Australia. The Climate Council has estimated that it has produced 19.1 million tonnes of CO2 since 2016. Shell has a 17 per cent stake in the North West Shelf gas project in WA—thanks, Labor. This project is mooted to generate four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide before its end date in 2070. Fossil fuels are responsible for nearly 90 per cent of all global carbon emissions.
The minister has this advice—which I will also table—that says that the partnership between Shell and the Queensland Museum is likely unlawful because Shell’s operations are directly impacting on Queensland’s natural and cultural heritage, which the Queensland Museum Act requires the Queensland Museum to preserve.
Will the government act to preserve our kids’ education and the independence of our state’s institutions? Probably not. They are all in the pocket of big business. They would probably put a Shell or Adani logo on the front of this building if they could.