Me: [knock, knock] Hello.

Senator George Brandis, Australian Attorney-General: Who is it [from behind the door]. This had better be important. I'm on the last chapter of "Still Not Sorry" by Voltaire.

Me: It's important. I wouldn't have come all this way to your alternative universe for nothing.

GB: [opens door]. Well come in, come in. Take the weight off your… arghhh! What's that in your hand?

Me: A mobile phone. But never mind that. I can't join you in there, but I do need to talk to you. I've come about that interview you gave the other day. The one where you said climate change deniers were being... what was it… "excluded from the debate"?

GB: Yes. Rather good I thought, especially that bit where I called some of those climate believers "medieval". What about it?

Me: Well, I think that you might have got your two universes a bit transposed. That restaurant where you gave that interview… it's actually in the real world.

GB: It's WHAT? I'm always so careful with my universes. What makes you think I mucked up?

Me: There were a few clues. There was that bit when you were banging on about how climate change was something people "mock at your peril" and how deniers were excluded from the argument. Well, you know about News Corporation, right? They've got something like 70 per cent of the newspaper readership. I mean, practically all their main writers are....

GB: Never heard of them.

Me: That's because you're standing in there in your alternative universe and I'm out here. There are contrarians everywhere at News Corp. Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Terry McCrann, Tim Blair. And the deniers are all over commercial radio too. And let's not get started on the blogs.

GB: Well I have heard that radio show with Alan Jones. He's in and out of here all the time. Reckons all that climate change stuff is witchcraft.

Me: Right. OK. And then there was that bit where you said that "one side" wouldn't engage with climate deniers intelligently and how science is about being sceptical.

GB: Yes... all perfectly correct.

Me: No, no, no. Correct where you're standing right now maybe, but not out here. I mean yes, science is about being sceptical… that's obvious. But there are almost no proper scientists left who reckon we don't cause climate change. The scientists have been sceptical about climate change. They've studied all that stuff about there being a new ice age coming or that it's just all natural. They've looked at it all, they've been researching all that for decades.

GB: Hang on, hang on. What do you mean proper scientists? I know a proper scientist when I meet one, thank you. They're always writing columns in The Australian about how climate change is all overblown rubbish. That's what proper scientists do, write op-eds and work for think tanks. They devote their lives to trying to understand the complexities of getting stuff in The Australian and avoiding peer review. I'm not saying they're right, of course.

Me: Really, this idea that climate change deniers are some sort of poor repressed group just doesn't stand up out here. They're not so much repressed as bloody everywhere. Oh, except in science journals. They're not really there.

GB: Ah.. that's because they're repressed.

Me: Then there's your boss. You have met Tony Abbott's top business advisor, right? Maurice Newman? You know, the guy who reckons climate change is a "scientific delusion"… hang on, who is that behind your modest-sized bookcase?

GB: Maurice, come out from there.

Me: Is Tony's renewables policy adviser there too? [movement behind bookcase] Dick, I can see you there you know.

GB: Hey, you know you really shouldn't keep using that word denier. You're just doing that so that people associate me with homeopathy denial.

Me: Listen, Senator. I just… I just can't talk to you while you're still in there. But before I go, you were right about one thing in that interview.

GB: Oh yeh, what was that?

Me: When you said that sometimes people who question the science are in danger of being mocked. That does happen. I mean, it's happening right now. Here, where I'm standing. I'm mocking you, but I promise to stop if you come out.

GB: Bigot.