John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Those who sit opposite have spent the entirety of question time trying to establish something sinister in the fact that there may have been a conversation between me and Ron Walker. That is a measure of the trivia that this opposition goes on with at question time. This is meant to be the new Labor politics. This is meant to be the high standard. Let me say that I am not the least bit embarrassed about the fact that I have revealed to the world that Ron Walker had a conversation with me about this. Any suggestion of impropriety in that is ludicrous. The people who are doing themselves a disservice are the alternative government of this country. They are flouncing around Australia saying that they care about climate change. They have spent an hour trying to allege some conspiracy in relation to what the Chief Scientist says is one of the two modes of running power stations in this country which will not have harmful effects on our environment and will not be damaging in the climate change scenario. I would have thought that, instead of alleging in a childish, juvenile fashion that there was something sinister in my having had a discussion—

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