He made the comment at the rescheduled World Environment Day Dinner in Bega, held on July 8 after being postponed from June due to safety concerns during the region’s heavy rains at the start of the month. 

Mr Debus, who served as NSW Environment Minister for the Australian Labor Party from 1999-2007, was the speaker for the event.

To an audience of about 70 people, he discussed his time as minister, the changing nature of conservatism, lack of funding for conservation and the future of environmental politics. 

He said the Australian government has disengaged from some of the policies of the last 40 years, with the state budget for conservation reduced and the federal budget fallen so far it could only be called derisory.

While he said both Labor and Liberal governments had achievements in conservation - adding conflicts within a cabinet could be more intense than conflicts within a parliament – this stopped during the days of the Abbott government.

Mr Debus said Tony Abbott pitched for the votes of fishers angry about marine parks, toured the world promoting the coal industry and when Mr Abbott formed government he relentlessly undermined confidence in the renewable energy industry.

He said climate change would cause massive issues in the future. 

“The actual existence of global warming is something that is only contested by an idiot fringe,” Mr Debus said. 

He said traditional conservatism was about the conservation of institutions and was not opposed to the conservation of nature.

However, the new brand of conservatism, neoconservatism or neoliberalism, was overtly hostile to nature conservation and that was the origin of a new strain of environmental politics. 

Mr Debus said neoliberal politics have treated climate change as a mere question of political opinion and sought to reduce the regulation of the fossil fuel industry. 

While he was anxious to avoid partisan commentary on the night, he said almost nothing has been done to repair the damage to policies regarding the conservation of nature over the last three to four years.