Warmists hijacking the Great Barrier Reef for big bucks

By Viv Forbes

Australia's Great Barrier Reef has become a money magnet for those with green political agendas.

The climax of this green racket was the sudden dumping of $444 million by the Australian government into a small foundation controlled by big businesses and groups committed to one side of the man-made global warming debate. This gigantic green gift is designed to polish the green electoral credentials of the embattled Turnbull government but has prompted an inquiry by the Australian Senate. (A couple of days later, P.M. Turnbull announced $180 million for drought relief.)

Naturally, the Australian Labor Party Opposition wants the money returned so it can re-use it to buy green votes for its members when they take power.

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation (whose Brisbane office is far from the Reef) has a huge board whose members have current or past ties to Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Esso, the University of Queensland, Boeing, Qantas, Shell, Rio Tinto, Peabody Energy, Origin Energy, AGL, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Queensland Ballet, Suncorp, UNICEF, and James Cook University. All are infected with the green religion or see it in their interest to polish their green halo. There is even an Al -Gore-trained climate alarmist on the board, plus a director of Tilt Renewables Limited and a partner of Affirmative Investment Management, the world's first dedicated green bond fund management company.

The board and senior management of this newly rich foundation is so openly biased toward man-made global warming alarmism that the chairman in a TV interview felt free to say, "There are no climate skeptics here" (or words to that effect). And the managing director said that "without a doubt," climate change is the biggest threat to the reef.

This tsunami of money will thus flow to the alarmist side of the climate debate – the Green Team is drowning in dollars. Where are the funds for the Blue Team?

The need to be seen doing things will now create a new threat to the reef – an invading army of day tourists and resort residents – academics, students, reporters, U.N. busybodies, photographers, federal and state bureaucrats, doomsday merchants, company directors, and politicians from all sides.

The Great Barrier Reef has been "under threat" for at least 50 years. Each new "threat" brings a new flood of taxpayer money. The alarmist "science" changes, but the reef remains.

Corals are the great survivors on planet Earth – for millions of years, they have endured ice ages and global warming, mass extinctions, fluctuating sea levels, rivers of sediments, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. They have even re-colonized the Bikini atomic testing site.

They will certainly outlast the Turnbull government and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.