Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday rejected Swedish climate worrier Greta Thunberg and her gratuitous advice, declaring he was “not here to impress people overseas.”
Thunberg retweeted a video from Australian media outlet 9 News on Sunday, adding politicians had failed to connect “increased extreme weather events and nature disasters.”
The leader of the conservative coalition government dismissed Thunberg’s observation, saying he was focused on Australia’s interests rather than responding to observations being delivered from the safety of 12,000 miles away.
Morrison also rejected calls to downsize Australia’s lucrative coal industry, noting Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas and he intends to keep it that way.
“Australia and the Australian Government will set our policies based on Australia’s national interests, on what Australia needs to do,” Mr Morrison told reporters in the rural center of Mudgee.
“That’s where I keep my focus. It’s not for me to make commentaries on what those outside of Australia think that Australia should do. We’ll do in Australia what we think is right for Australia. And that has always been my guiding principle.”
Morrison, who was touring the worst hit areas to thank firefighters and see conditions for himself, then took direct aim at overseas commentators, saying he was elected to serve the Australian people not the passing fads of professional climate alarmists.
“I’m not here to try to impress people overseas,” Morrison said. “I’m here to do the right job for Australians and put them first, and that means putting the environment in which we live at the top of the agenda, along with the economy in which people live at the top of the agenda.
“And making sure that we have responsible plans to balance the issues to ensure that people have what they need going into the future and they can be confident about their future.”
Morrison took time out to thank U.S. and Canadian firefighters who have given up Christmas at home with their families to stand alongside firefighters Down Under:
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce meanwhile lashed out at Thunberg, declaring he did not want to hear from “a screeching Scandinavian teenager” about how to deal with the nation’s fire crisis.
He said the teenager should “stick to screaming at your school mates and your teachers” in her homeland rather than lecture Australians.
“I don’t want to hear from screeching Scandinavians telling me how to deal with bushfires in northern NSW; a screeching Scandinavian teenager is proselytising to northern NSW,” Joyce told the Australian.
“She has probably never even set foot here. It is like me giving the iceberg report to the fields of Norway. I mean it is ridiculous.”
This is not the first time Morrison has happily stood against prevailing globalist opinions.
Soon after his re-election Morrison, ordered his own department to remove gender-neutral signage on bathroom doors, lambasting them as “ridiculous.”
He also called the signs “political correctness”, “not necessary” and “over the top” before vowing to “sort out” who was responsible for the signage and have them removed, as Breitbart News reported.
Then in October he hit out at the U.N., saying he did not want to see global organisations interfering in the governance of independent nations and “demanding conformity” of words, thoughts and actions.
He spoke in Sydney a week after using an address at the U.N. to confront “internal and global” critics of Australia’s climate policies.
“The world works best, we believe, I believe, when the character and distinctiveness of independent nations is preserved within a framework of mutual respect,” Morrison said. “This includes respecting the electoral mandates of their constituencies.”
The prime minister warned more broadly that freedom of “exchange”, “open markets”, “capital” and “ideas” had never been more important, but were under threat by “unaccountable globalist bodies.”