Prime Minister Tony Abbott with Maurice Newman, the chair of his business advisory council. Credit:Andrew Meares Mr Newman's column was written to coincide with an Australian visit by the head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres. It follows a piece Mr Newman wrote last year in which he said governments had been hijacked by "green gesture politics" and the world was not prepared for the problem of "global cooling". "It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO₂ emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error. It's not surprising," Mr Newman wrote on Friday. "Why then, with such little evidence, does the UN insist the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on futile climate change policies? Perhaps Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN's framework on climate change, has the answer?"

Mr Newman continued that global warming was a "hook" to install a new world order. "Figueres is on record saying democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China, she says, is the best model," he said. "This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN." He then urges the Abbott government to oppose a regime that was against "capitalism and freedom" by resisting the next global climate treaty in Paris, which countries hope to reach in December. This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN

Mr Newman adds that, like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Abbott should resist the UN's calls for coal to stay in the ground. The vast majority of the world's scientists, including most of the world's scientific academies, agree humans are causing climate change. Among them, the Academy of Science, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are affecting the climate. Ms Figueres said during her visit this week that Australia would ultimately have to move away from coal for both environmental and economic reasons. Mr Newman is a former chairman of the ABC and the Australian Securities Exchange.

At a media conference on Australia's renewable energy target in Melbourne on Friday, Labor's environment spokesman Mark Butler was asked whether the opposition thought Mr Newman should stand down. "I've never been particularly clear why Maurice Newman holds the position he does hold given how central climate change is to the future economic prosperity of Australia," Mr Butler said. "As the senior business adviser what Maurice Newman said in The Australian newspaper this morning is no different to the sorts of things he's been saying for years about this incredibly important policy. "That ultimately, though, is a matter for the Prime Minister." Mr Hunt said the government's approach was to work constructively with all international parties.

"I met this week with Christiana Figueres. Our goal is to be part of a constructive post- 2020 agreement," Mr Hunt said. "We want to address the problem, we're working with other countries and the international organisations. "Individuals are entitled to their views. Our approach is to work constructively with all international parties." Mr Newman's other thoughts on climate change: "Man-made 'carbon pollution' has become the shorthand rallying cry that unites global warming believers. The notion is a figment. It is made up. It is rooted in anti-capitalist, anti-growth green ideology that, for too long, has been bullied into our consciousness as science." – The Australian, March 27, 2015

"Back in the real world, the poor are dying of the cold while the political elites and their friends bask in the warmth of cosy conferences, taxpayer subsidies and research grants.They seem indifferent to the hardship that their actions, based on dubious science, impose on the world's underprivileged." – The Australian, February 6, 2015 "The political left has seized on climate change as the new Marxism. It rejects empirical evidence which is inconvenient and promotes dubious and sometimes fabricated science as proven. In true totalitarian style it seeks to shut down debate and ruin the careers and reputations of those who dare to oppose the orthodoxy." – The Australian, January 20, 2015 "[Christine] Milne's prescription for a vibrant Australian economy includes 'keeping the renewable energy target at 41,000 gigawatt-hours', 'stopping new coalmines', 'no coal-seam gas' and 'no new ports'. 'Jobs will come from green energy,' Milne assures us. She could have added, there are fairies at the bottom of her garden." – The Australian, November 7, 2014 "At the same time, like primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods, many governments, including Australia's former Labor government, used the biased research to pursue 'green' gesture politics. If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared." – The Australian, August 14 2014