Great barrier grief as Greens trash-talk ‘dying reef, by Peter Michael.

THE Greens Party took a taxpayer-funded $6000 charter boat and plane trip to the Great Barrier Reef yesterday only to declare Queensland’s biggest tourism asset dead.

In what some local tour operators described as “scaremongering”, Greens Leader Richard Di Natale and deputy Senator Larissa Waters said the “death” of the reef was a “national catastrophe”.

But the pair told of “sheer beauty” as they snorkelled off a luxury game boat at a cost of $2250-a-day, at Michaelmas Cay off Cairns yesterday.

Tourism operators, some of who refused to ferry the Greens out to the reef, warned political scaremongering was rubbishing the reputation of our greatest natural asset and killing off the drawcard for a $6 billion-a-year tourist industry which employs 60,000 staff.

More nonsense because of a primitive, faulty model taught in introductory climate science. By the way, the Great Barrier Reef has only been in its current location for about 12 thousand years, since the water rose when the last ice age ended. Before that it was hundreds of kilometers further east.

hat-tip Barry Corke