The Liberal senator Eric Abetz has compared the Conversation website to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, after it announced a zero-tolerance approach to climate change deniers.
The academic news and analysis website has said it will remove comments and lock accounts that put forward those views, outraging the Tasmanian senator.
“Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong couldn’t have put it better themselves. They’d be so proud,” he told parliament.
“To so superciliously and arrogantly deny a voice to an alternative point of view is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.”
The editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, said the academic website was committed to presenting peer-reviewed rigorous science no matter what perspectives they represent.
“We are not silencing commenters altogether,” Ketchell told Guardian Australia. “They have had several years in which they have been able to post those comments on our website.
“They’ve been doing it for a number of years and because the arguments haven’t changed and the evidence hasn’t changed we think they’ve had ample opportunity to have their say.
“We’re really committed to presenting the evidence accurately in a way that keeps readers informed and we believe the evidence comes from accurate experts who know what they’re talking about and not people who are peddling individual opinions.
“We don’t think it’s appropriate to give those opinions similar weight.”
In a blog post, Ketchell said people peddling pseudoscience were perpetuating ideas that would ultimately destroy the planet.
Abetz, who describes himself as a climate change agnostic, said environmental prophets of doom had been getting it wrong for half a century.
“This ugly, unscientific, totalitarian, arrogant approach taken by the Conversation is the exact opposite to the principles of scientific endeavour.”
He said the lesson of history was that truth would ultimately prevail.
“The Conversation can stop the conversation, but it cannot stop the march of inquiring minds that will ultimately determine this issue,” Abetz said.
