Ray Evans

Ray Evans (10 September 1939 – 17 June 2014) was an Australian business leader, political conservative, and campaigner against climate change mitigation efforts.

Early years

Ray Evans was educated at Melbourne High School. He attended the University of Melbourne, from which he graduated in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. During his years at university, he served as President of the Melbourne University ALP Club and as a delegate from the Federated Fodder and Fuel Trades Union to Victorian ALP State Conferences.

He resigned from the ALP to act as campaign manager for Sam Benson in the latter's successful campaign to retain the federal seat of Batman as an independent in 1966. In the 1960s Evans worked as a young engineer in the Production Planning Section of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.

Career

He taught electrical engineering at Deakin University, Victoria. From 1982 until 2001, he was Executive Officer at the major Australian mining company, Western Mining Corporation, (WMC Ltd), under Hugh Morgan. From July 2001 to June 2014, he was the Director of Ray Evans & Associates, a consultancy specialising in political and economic advice.

Political advocacy

In January 1986, Evans, along with former federal Treasurer Peter Costello and two others, founded the H R Nicholls Society, a think tank of the New Right, of which he became president. The Society has had considerable influence over Liberal Party policies. The initial motivation for founding the Society was industrial relations – a commitment to "freedom in the labour market", and opposition to the Australian industrial relations mechanism, represented by the establishment of the minimum wage by Justice Henry Bourne Higgins in the 1905 "Harvester Judgement".

Global warming skepticism

He was also a founder of the Lavoisier Group, which opposed the ratification of the Kyoto treaty, believing that the science associated with global warming is uncertain. Additionally, he was instrumental in establishing a number of other right-wing organisations, such as the Bennelong Society, and the Samuel Griffith Society, for all of which he was either president or treasurer. According to author Clive Hamilton, many of these groups "shared the same post office box".

A supporter of the "Greenhouse Mafia", he remained a committed campaigner against climate change initiatives, dubbing global warming "the mother of environmental scares". In collaboration with Hugh Morgan, Evans worked against the Kyoto Protocol, and was central to the campaign to prevent the former Federal Liberal Government from taking actions to cut emissions.

He appeared on the ABC's discussion panel discussing The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which questioned the science behind global warming. He has stated that environmentalism is a "religious belief," and published a book Nine Facts About Climate Change in 2007.

He was quoted in The Age as saying that Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth is "bullshit from beginning to end", and that "the carbon-dioxide link [to global warming] is increasingly recognised as irrelevant".

Death

He died on 17 June 2014 in Melbourne, aged 74 (though some reports incorrectly stated he was 79).