Andrew Bolt:
Joining me is that professor who was sacked after calling out the Great Barrier Reef Scare, Dr. Peter Ridd. Peter, always great to see you. And it’s always the same thing. Whenever I talk to you, yet more evidence that you were right and they were wrong. These latest reef results, what did they show you?
Peter Ridd:
They show obviously that the reef is in wonderful condition. Yes, it goes through ups and downs as that graph shows, but at the moment it’s in wonderful condition, more coral in the last six years than any of the previous 35 years since records began. But it also shows that our science institutions are basically untrustworthy. We’ve had over 60 years of Great Barrier Reef doomism. And really what this shows us is that we’ve got to actually start to hold the institutions to account. We’ve actually got to start to do something about this. One of the things that you haven’t mentioned is that yes, there’s a whole lot of, I reckon probably three to $400 million a year is spent to save the reef.
But at a lower level that people don’t notice is that all the farmers up and down this coast have all these crazy regulations slapped on them. And we’ve been working to try to actually get these removed, or at least to check the science behind some of those regulations. And I can talk to you about how well that is going with a Liberal National party government, which we have in Queensland at the moment. But basically what has to be done now is that it is quite clear that the science institutions have got it wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and we’ve now got to hold them to account and fix up the regulations that are being based on that bad science.
Andrew Bolt:
Yes. The farmers, of course, faced restrictions on nutrient runoff and all that kind of thing, but also supposedly destroying the reef. Listen, is there much danger from manmade warming to the reef?
Peter Ridd:
No, really there isn’t. I mean, the best coral on earth, the most diverse coral on earth is actually in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, in a place they call the Coral Triangle. It has another name, which is the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, because it’s the warmest water on earth, and that’s where the coral is most diverse and it grows the fastest. So if anything, coral are going to do very well. But one of the things that really disappoints me, I get grumpy with those science institutions pushing out all these doomism, but I kind of expect it. But what has really disappointed me is that we’ve been trying to, with some agricultural organisations, to get this science checked. And the Christopher Foley government has told us basically, no, they will not check any of this science. And to check it would only cost a few hundred thousand dollars within the new Queensland Productivity Commission. This is at the state level.
The Christopher Foley government, a Liberal National government said, no, they will not do that. And then they gave another $300 million to exactly the science institutions that have been giving us this dross for so long. So I’m actually at a stage now where I’m really tired of a Liberal National Party government doing absolutely nothing. Now at the federal level, you’ve got people like Matt Canavan who are right behind, I think, checking the science. I don’t know where Angus Taylor is, but at the state level, the Christopher Foley government has effectively nurtured Labour laws, nurtured Labour-funded organisations to make regulations that is smashing our farmers based on unchecked science. And this is where something is going to need to be done. And we are going to actually be looking at all the parties at the federal level and even One Nation to ask, will they support check the science? Will we be able to do something about this Christopher Foley government that is doing nothing to solve this problem?
Andrew Bolt:
Well, you mentioned Matt Canavan. He’s going to be exactly my next guest. So I shall ask him just that. Peter Ridd, thank you very much indeed.
This transcript with Dr Peter Ridd talking on The Bolt Report – News24 from 11 August 2026 has been edited for clarity.
