Maurice Newman Credit:Nic Walker Not that he was the first to make the substitution. That honour goes arguably to a US Republican senator and leading light of the Tea Party, Paul Broun, who declared to the House in 2009 that climate scientists "want to change us to a New World Order … to destroy America, to destroy our freedom." What is most interesting, however, about Newman's assertion that climate science is "about a new world order under the control of the UN" is that it illustrates the extraordinary robustness of a conspiracy theory that holds global centralised rule to be both possible and unwelcome. With a faint whiff of irony, one of the most comprehensive overviews of this idea was written in the late 90s by another occasional contributor to The Australian, US historian Daniel Pipes. These days best known for his sometimes contentious critiques of Islamism in his journal Middle East Quarterly, in 1997 Mr Pipes wrote a masterful book called Conspiracy: how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from. In it, he tracked the advent of the world-domination idea to the Crusades, starting in 1096. The Crusades themselves were overtly aimed at wresting control of the Holy Land from Moslems, but Pipes tracks a secondary objective – heading off a secret global takeover by Jews.

This idea, and the fear it engendered, became deep-rooted in European Christian discourse. In the 15th century, Protestantism was propelled by the anti-Semitic fear of a global conspiracy. Jews, thundered Martin Luther, act "with a view to finally overcoming us … and to strive for our final, complete, and eternal ruin!" The first use of the term "new world order" in the modern era is often ascribed to US President Woodrow Wilson, who was instrumental in setting up the League of Nations in the wake of World War I. At the time, the phrase had only positive connotations – a global conference to prevent another slaughter. Within weeks, however, the New World Order was denounced by conspiracy fans as a plot perpetrated by the US Rothschild family. Of course, in more recent times not all New World Order theorists are anti-Semitic – and Maurice Newman most certainly isn't. Indeed, since the 1960s, there has been a discernible drift in assigning the role of the hidden villain away from crude religious stereotypes towards boogey-persons in white coats and laboratories. And this is where it gets interesting: in its adaptability, this is a conspiracy theory that moves with the times and is utterly resistant to evidence. The notion of the techno-baddie started to play in the late seventies, mirroring the growth of communications and computers. The explanations were often labyrinthine, but the central idea never varied: technological innovation was a tool created by secretive and powerful forces in order to bend the rest of us to their evil wills. In the 1990s,patriot groups found proof of imminent foreign invasion on the back of a Kix cereal box and worried about health food stores fronting for the dangerous New Age movement. Daniel Pipes

In 1998, British author Marina Benjamin wrote a study of apocalyptic movements, called Living At The End Of The World. The science-based New World Order conspiracy theories at the close of the 20th century, she noted, had yet to shed their religious roots. "VISA cards, the bank accounts of multinational corporations, social security numbers, tax returns and fibre optics top the current hit list of the antichristian global economy," she wrote. "All are depersonalising, all are master-minded by a tiny elite of scientifically minded businessmen and most of them, somehow or other, implicate the demonic number 666." The New World Order construct, however, is as attractive to paranoid atheists as it is to religious fruitcakes and business advisors. Thus, before long, signs of the hidden hand of the undeclared dictator were being detected in all sorts of new inventions: bar codes, CCTV cameras, satellites and so on. "In the 1990s," wrote Daniel Pipes, "patriot groups found proof of imminent foreign invasion on the back of a Kix cereal box and worried about health food stores fronting for the dangerous New Age movement." The historian quotes then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali showing an admirable sense of the absurd: "It's great to be back from vacation. Frankly I get bored on vacation. It's much more fun to work here, blocking reform, flying my black helicopters, imposing global taxes."

It's not surprising, therefore, that the latest bad guy role in the New World Order conspiracy is played by climate scientists. Near complete expert consensus on any matter – global warming, fluoridation, nuclear disarmament, vaccination – immediately produces a reaction among the paranoid. It is a commonplace for US conservatives to denounce climate change as a UN-controlled hoax. Oddly, however, it is Maurice Newman who has re-introduced a strangely religious hue into what is largely a secular conspiracy theory. In 2014, he wrote that global warming mitigation was akin to "primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods." Earlier, in 2012, he observed that "a new global warming religion was born, replete with its own church (the UN), a papacy (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and a global warming priesthood masquerading as climate scientists". These are dangerous waters for a man like Newman – prime-ministerial adviser, former university chancellor and past chair of the ABC – to swim in. In so doing, he must swim close to other types of New World Order conspiracy believer: anti-Semites, racists, Tea Party fundamentalists, and people convinced that the world is run by extraterrestrial lizards. The lizard thing is fascinating. It stems from a theory concocted by British conspiracist David Icke, who believes that most world leaders are alien reptiles in disguise. The idea has spawned a legion of observers, who study presidents and prime ministers for telltale reptilian traits, such as poorly concealed third eyelids, flicking tongues, or suddenly biting into an unpeeled onion without shedding a tear.

Oh, hang on …