Australia Is Now Considered A Sovereign Risk

Climate Changes, But Facts Don’t: Debunking Monckton

On the 19th of July in 2011 the National Press Club of Australia held a debate on climate change. In this video I will be analysing the claims Monckton made during the debate and if they are correct or not.

The reason I’m doing this is that Monckton challenges his critics to check his sources, or like he put it in this debate “to do your homework”. I’m going to follow him up on this to see if the scientific literature, and other available sources, corroborate what he’s saying.

Video description

On the 19th of July in 2011 the National Press Club of Australia held a debate on climate change. I will be analysing the claims Monckton made during the debate and if they are correct or not.

In this particular section of the debate Monckton makes the claim that "Australia is now regarded as a sovereign risk". What does this mean and was this an accurate depiction?

Transcript

And the people of Australia are frightened. They are frightened of their government, they are frightened of you. The world is also frightened. Australia is now regarded as a sovereign risk. Please, I beg you, do not merely accept consensus, think and think again.

Thank you.

The claim that Australia is now regarded as a sovereign risk caught my attention. It is a very strange point, how would a carbon tax make a country a sovereign risk?

Being considered a sovereign risk means that financial institutions overseas fear Australia will default on its debt and other payments. In the very least it means that the perception that this could happen has increased.

I asked Monckton what he meant by this and he pointed to the debt and budget deficit of Australia of the past 10 years. But this has nothing to do with the Australian carbon tax.

Nor is it a correct assessment of the financial state of Australia. It is a country with an AAA rating, a GDP of 1.4 trillion, with a debt of just 27% of GDP. The statement Monckton made is not supported by the economic statistics that are available.

Sources

  1. Lord Christopher Monckton and Dr Richard Denniss address National Press Club
  2. Debunking the bunkum of that dopey Monckton
  3. CIA – The World Factbook - Australia

Media resources

  1. File:AUS orthographic.svg
  2. Aussie money notes by vagawi
  3. File:Dette publique2011.jpg

Climate Changes, But Facts Don’t: Debunking Monckton