Exclusive: Speaking tour by controversial academic Peter Ridd is being supported by sugarcane managers paid for with Queensland government funds

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Sugarcane industry managers funded by grants from the Queensland government to help cane growers reduce pollution flowing onto the Great Barrier Reef are promoting lectures by a controversial scientist who argues farm runoff is no threat to the reef.

Peter Ridd began a speaking tour of regional Queensland on Monday amid fierce opposition to proposed state regulations that would set restrictions for sediment and chemical runoff from farms into reef catchments.

His lectures – which dispute the overwhelming consensus of reef scientists – argue that pollution from farmland is not seriously damaging the reef.

The events are hosted by regional branches of the sugar cane growers peak body, Canegrowers, and the Australian Environment Foundation, a charity set up by the rightwing thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs, and with strong links to the agriculture and fossil fuel industries.

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The new regulations were announced by the Queensland government in February, partly because of an ongoing lack of farmers taking part in voluntary “best management practice” (BMP) programs, which offer incentives to improve practices.

The state provides funding for the Canegrowers organisation to run its own version – called “Smartcane BMP” – and pays for the positions of more than a dozen BMP facilitators to assist farmers with water quality practices and encourage them to participate. Guardian Australia has seen emails from at least two program facilitators to farmers and others, encouraging them to attend the Ridd lectures.

The Queensland environment minister, Leeanne Enoch, told Guardian Australia: “There is a clear expectation that the organisation uses that taxpayer funding for its stated purpose.”

Enoch said science had “come under attack for political purposes” and pointed to a Liberal National party suggestion that the state establish a scientific review office, prompted partly by unhappiness about the scientific consensus that agriculture is harming the reef.

“This office of ‘alternative facts’ would be used to undermine science in this state,” Enoch said.

“For the last decade, the Queensland government has supported agricultural industries to voluntarily improve their practices. However, uptake has not been fast enough, so water quality has continued to decline.”

WWF-Australia said the attacks on reef science were hypocritical and damaging to the sugar industry.

“Over the past decade, tens of millions in taxpayers’ money have supported many cane farmers to reduce excess fertiliser, pesticides and sediment in runoff, including projects managed by Canegrowers,” said Dermot O’Gorman, WWF-Australia chief executive.

“Now Canegrowers seek to denigrate the very science that delivered public financial assistance to increase farm efficiency and productivity.”

Guardian Australia has spoken to several cane farmers and other industry stakeholders who say they’re embarrassed by the nature of the debate, which has been skewed by certain district branches’ embrace of contrarian science.

Comparisons have been made with Adani, and opponents of reef regulations appear intent on following Adani’s aggressive campaign strategy, which sought to undermine the Queensland Labor government’s standing in regional areas.

“It’s one thing to oppose regulations because they would have a bad impact on growers, that’s fair enough, that’s what those groups are supposed to do,” one farmer said. “But to then turn around and say, after years of trying to get people on board, to say we don’t believe the science any more –it’s just not being straight up.”

Another industry worker said: “We receive a lot of federal and state money through to promote engagement and extension … and then play a double game by promoting ‘the other side of the story’ and … possibly undermining all the hard work we have achieved with some growers.”

Earlier this year Canegrowers was handed one of the first grants awarded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s partnership with the federal government, for a behavioural management program called “Cane Changer”. The $1.4m grant aims to help promote best management practice and to improve uptake.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view of sugar cane growing in the Bundaberg region in Queensland. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

Canegrowers said in a statement it believed provisions in the new reef regulations – which include variable runoff load limits – would act as a disincentive to growers continuing to engage with BMP programs, but that the organisation “remain(s) committed to managing the impact of farming on the waterways that feed into the Great Barrier Reef”.

“Growers are being asked to operate under policies and laws that governments tell us are formulated and guided on the basis of science. So naturally, growers have a keen interest in the science and in any concerns or discrepancies around it particularly where it is used to justify regulation on their activities.

“All government grants provided to Canegrowers or to any district organisation require regular financial reports to the relevant government department, as well as annual financial audits by an independent auditor.”

Ridd’s lectures are being hosted by local district branches, and Canegrowers could not say what assistance or funding any district had provided.

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The Bundaberg district has been among most vocal in supporting Ridd. Local representative Allan Dingle has said the event would “set the record straight” and end “unsubstantiated scaremongering” about the reef. The local News Corp-owned paper, the Bundaberg News-Mail, last week published a full page of Ridd’s claims without critique or context.

For context, Dr Jon Brodie, a water quality expert at the ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville – the same university ruled to have unlawfully dismissed Ridd last year – said the controversial academic’s views were at odds with hundreds of experts in the scientific community.

“They’re not supported by any other scientist we can think of. On one side we have hundreds of scientists from dozens of institutions in Australia and overseas, lots of universities involved in this work publishing thousands of peer-reviewed papers, brought together in the consensus statement [in 2017],” Brodie said.

On Wednesday, the Australian Coral Reef Society released a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” about Ridd’s lecture tour, and provided a detailed scientific response to claims he has made.

Brodie said efforts to improve reef water quality had started “plateauing”, and that two landmark reports – updates to the reef water quality report card and a major outlook report – were expected to be released in the coming months.

Enoch said the regulations were formulated in response to the recommendations of a 2016 Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce, and that they were based on the 2017 consensus statement.