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"We'll just put all the environment outside of Australia, just like we did with asylum seekers! Easy!" Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Expert advice is in the eye of the beholder

Environment Minister Greg "what's an environment?" Hunt has a difficult job. For a start, he has to do things like stand up in front of journalists and remember that his title isn't really Minister for Letting Private Concerns Profit From Exploiting The Environment Whatever That Even Is, despite that essentially being his brief.

After all, 2014 would be a stressful time to actually be responsible for environmental policy, what with the harshest predictions of the effects of global warming already coming to pass: intense storms all over the world, higher incidences of cyclones, flooding, sea level rise, the Antarctic melting to the point where the Earth's gravity has been changed and so on.

Fortunately Hunt doesn't let these sorts of things bother him, because you can't fear what you deliberately ignore.

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After all, closing his eyes really really tight is how he stopped being scared of the monster in his wardrobe, and that's how he's dealing with evidence that expanding Queensland's coal shipping will poison the Great Barrier Reef.

But lest you think that he doesn't take his ostensible responsibilities seriously, you might recall that Hunt insisted that he'd consulted the planet's greatest experts on climate change - Wikipedia - before going on BBC Radio on October 23 last year.

When denouncing claims from United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres that climate change was responsible for the increased incidence of bushfires, your minister "looked up what Wikipedia says" which was apparently "bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year That's the Australian experience".

Now, leaving aside the fact that Year 9s expect to be marked down for using Wikipedia as their sole source for a school report, there's the problematic Freedom Of Information-retrieved fact that Greggles had a meeting with the Bureau of Meteorology on October 3 last year.

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Greg Hunt can use Wikipedia?