IAG and the World Wildlife Fund’s Australian Climate Group is raising climate change issues the Government sees as being too political, and Canberra is taking action to silence the issue.

Climate change was listed as one of the top five issues for the insurance industry in the 2006 JP Morgan/Deloitte General Insurance Industry Survey. Finding a solution and way to monitor the issue is at the top of many insurers’ agendas.

Media reports yesterday said former CSIRO atmospheric research head Graeme Pearman was encouraged to take a redundancy package after joining the group and attempted to encourage political leaders to consider carbon trading and other methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

He told AAP he was ousted after “making public expressions of what I believed were scientific views on the basis that they were deemed to be political views. In 33 years [with the CSIRO], I don’t think I had ever felt I was political in that sense.”

Dr Pearman says he is concerned about the pressure on scientists whose research doesn’t match the message the Government wants to portray.

Another two top scientists said they were also told by the Government to remove “politically sensitive” information from climate change studies.

The ABC program Four Corners delved into the issue last night, speaking to a number of scientists about Australia’s so-called “Greenhouse Mafia”.

Dr Pearman told the program a lot of environmental scientists have been censored by the Government in the same way he has been.

“As far as I can see, it was CSIRO being enormously frightened of the idea that anyone in Government might interpret a piece of information that I was communicating from the basis of scientific knowledge as being critical of government policy.”

Guy Pearse, a speechwriter for the Environment Minister from 1997-2000, says he was silenced during his time with the minister and told not to “say anything that indicated that I disagreed with current government policy”.