Maurice Newman

Newman helped establish the Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative Australian political think-tank. He was a member of the first CIS Board which also included Neville Kennard and Ross Graham-Taylor.[10] Newman was associated with, and spoke at, a CIS event in December 2007 given in honour of conservative economist Milton Friedman.[11] Newman is said to have been a close friend of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Interviewed in 2010 about their friendship by the Institute of Company Directors, Newman stated: "Much is made of my friendship with Howard, which is long standing. Little is made of my friendship with Bill Hayden, which is just as close and of longer standing. The truth is, I am not party political. I have voted on both sides of the fence, state and Federal, because I am driven not by labels, but by policies."[12] During Newman's tenure as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Rupert Murdoch delivered the 2008 Boyer Lectures, "A Golden Age of Freedom". On the subject of financial market regulation Newman is reported as having said: "Politicians are getting into regulation and Regulators want to get into business. Regulators should look at ways to ensure transparency, but should not end up killing the business."[13]

Newman rejects the scientific consensus on global warming and has repeatedly advanced conspiratorial views about climate change.[14][15][16] In a speech to senior ABC staff on 10 March 2010 he said climate change was an example of "group-think". According to an account of the speech broadcast on ABC PM radio, Newman stated that "Contrary views had not been tolerated, and those who expressed them had been labelled and mocked. Mr Newman has doubts about climate change himself and says he's waiting for proof either way." When interviewed by Brendan Trembath he said:

"But climate change is at the moment an emotional issue but it really is the fundamental issue about the need to bring voices that have authority and are relevant to the particular issue to the attention of our audiences so that they themselves can make decisions. So that we are seen to trust and respect them sufficiently that they can make up their own minds about the various points of view that are being expressed through the medium of the ABC."[17]

In answer to the question of whether he was a climate change denier he replied:

"I am an agnostic and I have always been an agnostic and I will remain an agnostic until I've found compelling evidence on one side or the other that will move me. I think that what seems fairly clear to me is that the climate science is still being developed. There are a lot of question marks about some of the fundamental data which has been used to build models that requires caution."[17]

In an opinion piece in September 2013 Newman claimed that "The CSIRO … and the weather bureau, continue to propagate the myth of climate change …".[18] In another 2013 piece he called climate change a delusion, stating that: "[The IPCC] progressively has applied mass psychology through a compliant media to spread the delusion that wicked Western industrialists are causing irreparable damage to the climate".[14]

Newman wants the current Australian target for electricity generated by renewable sources dumped because he does not accept climate change science and says renewable energy is pushing up prices.[19]

In August 2014, Newman was widely criticised by leading scientists and newspaper journalists for stating that the earth is undergoing "cooling" rather than warming.[20][21] In 2015, Newman argued that climate change is propaganda aimed at bringing about a one world government controlled by the United Nations.[16]

Newman opposes the spread of wind energy and has advanced conspiracy theories about its use. In January 2012 he published an article in The Spectator in which he wrote,

"I am not a conspiracy theorist, but we have witnessed the birth of an extraordinary, universal and self-reinforcing movement among the political and executive arms of government, their academic consultants, the mainstream media and vested private sector interests (such as investment banks and the renewables industry), held together by the promise of unlimited government money. It may not be a conspiracy, but long-term, government-underwritten annuities have certainly created one gigantic and powerful oligopoly which must coerce taxpayers and penalise energy consumers to survive." His article concluded, "But don’t expect help from academia, mainstream media or the public service. They are members of the same establishment and worship together at the altar of global warming. By ruthlessly perpetuating the illusion that wind farms can somehow save the planet, they keep the money flowing. All the while the poor become poorer, ever more dependent on welfare and colder in winter."[22]

In July 2014, Newman was "kicked off" a wind farm committee after it was discovered he was attempting to restrict speakers from attending meetings.[23]

Newman is a vocal opponent of the 2020 virtual dialogues organized by the World Economic Forum's under the theme of The Great Reset.[24] In his scathing October 10, 2020 article criticizing the WEF 2020 annual meeting on the reset in a post-COVID 19 world, Newman warned that "anyone who fears big government and values free speech, freedom to choose and property rights, should be terrified". If the "dangerous elites" such as Prince Charles, the WEF director Klaus Schwab, the International Monetary Fund's managing director, the secretary general of the United Nations, the European Central Bank's president, the secretary-general of the OECD, and numerous other CEOs of technology companies, and nongovernmental organization representatives, succeed they will use the "opportunity" of the pandemic to further Green Plans and undermine capitalism around the world. Newman said that then President Donald Trump was a "major obstacle" to the WEF realizing its agenda of the great reset of society and the economy. Newman warned that now President Joe Biden—who was Trump's opponent in the 2020 United States presidential election, was Trump's "ideological opposite."[24] Newman focused on certain terms used during the 2020 discussions on how to prepare for a post-COVID-19 world, such as "opportunity", "reimagine", "revamp", to frame the dialogues as a prelude to the imposition of a what he called a nefarious new world order, a well-known conspiracy theory. He said that the preparations for a post-pandemic world is just "another fascist experiment being pushed by controlling elitists" whose children "will receive preferential access to higher education and elite positions" and will ultimately result in "inequality, serfdom and misery".[24] According to the BBC and The New York Times, by November 2021, there was a resurgence in the "baseless" great reset conspiracy theories.[25][26]