Garnaut sells his own report to Government

... which it paid for in the first place. But in the world of "climate change", anything goes, and no expense is spared in order to keep the rickety old bandwagon rolling.

In yet another appalling example of the waste of taxpayers' money on climate change, The Australian has revealed that, having given $2.3 million of your tax dollars to Ross Garnaut to prepare his tedious tome, the Government has now handed over the rights, for free, to the Cambridge University Press to sell it worldwide on a commercial basis, with precisely zero profits being returned to the Government. Which means, in a ludicrous turn of events, that the Government's Department of Climate Change had to buy its own copies, at a cost of more than $65,000 (paid for again by yet more of your tax dollars). Quite rightly, the Opposition is furious:

"It is outrageous that the Government has given away for nothing an expensive, taxpayer-funded report to a private company, which in turn is selling it with no return for taxpayers," Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield said.

"Australian taxpayers forked out their hard-earned money for the Garnaut report to be produced and yet they will not receive a single cent from its sale.

"If the report is to be sold, there should be a return for taxpayers."

It is unusual for a major international publishing house to become involved in the printing of a government report and then sell it on a commercial basis.

It's two embarrassments in three days for the Government's crazy climate change policies, with the admission on Wednesday that it's advertising campaign for "Think Climate. Think Change" had cost nearly $14 million. Australian Climate Madness indeed.

Read it here.