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

for these reasons. When the question of whether or not there was a campaign was put to the Prime Minister, he would have been aware that a marketing campaign had been thought about, that the planning had been done and that the expenditures were underway. He also would have been aware at that point that the specific purpose of this campaign was to reposition the Australian government as a positive force for dealing with climate change. Regrettably, the Howard government’s track record speaks for itself. This is the government that blocked emissions trading. This is the government that refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol. This is the government that will not support clean energy. In fact, the Prime Minister is on the record as saying that the contribution clean energy will make to dealing with reducing greenhouse gas emissions is marginal. This is the government that will not take the issue of climate change—which all Australians feel passionately needs to be addressed here and now—seriously at all. All it has done is try and spin its way out of trouble and, in spinning its way out of trouble, begin the process of doing what it has done for the last 11 years and has increased in magnitude in the last 12 months—which is to spend more taxpayers’ money convincing Australians that it is doing the things that people, deep in their hearts, know that it is not. That is the worst thing of all about this government. Not only is it leading the Australian people in a way which does not give them confidence about facing the future, but it is prepared to use a public relations campaign, spin doctors and marketing in order to convince Australians of something otherwise.

When these issues were first raised in Senate estimates, it would have been very simple for the government to come into the parliament and make clear what their response was, and that the campaign that had been identified in Senate estimates was the campaign identified by the Prime Minister in his answer to the House. Why didn’t the Prime Minister do that? Why didn’t he come straight in and say, ‘In fact this relates to the public information campaign that the minister for the environment spoke about before he went away to Alaska.’ The answer is that it was not that campaign at all. This is an additional campaign whose primary task is to deal with the poor opinion polling the Prime Minister is facing and the lack of confidence that the Australian public have in the government’s ability to deal with the issue of climate change on the basis of their record of the past 11 years, their denial, their refusal to ratify Kyoto and their consistent undermining of the issue of climate change per se.

The Prime Minister has now said that he will be providing a responsible, moderated, real answer and a real framework to deal with the issue of climate change. What has taken so long? If he said last night, as was reported, that there is a dark cloud out there—and the Prime Minister is now coming into the chamber—

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