Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

and that urgent and immediate action to deal with climate change is necessary—not rhetoric, not taxpayer funded public awareness campaigns and not spin-doctoring of an order of magnitude that is going to cost the Australian taxpayer somewhere between $23 million and $50 million.

A censure motion is a serious motion to bring into this House, and in his answer the Prime Minister showed that the motion was appropriately and responsibly moved. We have a situation in which the Prime Minister over a certain period in office has effectively let down the Australian people. He has let down the Australian people in two ways: he has let them down by not taking climate change seriously and he has let them down by coming into the House and giving the level of answers which make clear that he is perfectly prepared to have a public awareness campaign go out into the public domain although he knows nothing whatsoever about it. The Prime Minister is fond of saying:

People can talk theoretically about what might happen to Australia and the planet in 50 years’ time.

Or additionally:

I accept that climate change is a challenge, I accept the broad theory about global warming. I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions.

But critically, the Prime Minister was asked a series of simple questions in this House—questions on Wednesday and Thursday and again on Monday and Tuesday—

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