Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Climate change is real. It is significant and it is profound. But if you were the Leader of the Opposition and you were speaking to the leader of the free world, believing that this was an important issue and, in your own words, ‘one of the great moral issues’, would you imagine that you might raise climate change—just once—with the American President? In a 45-minute meeting—three-quarters of an hour—and with the chance to range across the great issues of the world, the chance to prove his mettle and with such an important issue, the head of the Labor Party in this parliament could not even raise it with President Bush.

If I am wrong, come in and deny it: that is the message to the Leader of the Opposition. If I am wrong, let the member for Kingsford Smith come in and deny that, faced with the chance to raise climate change directly with President Bush during negotiations on one of the most important international agreements on this topic, the Leader of the Opposition said nothing. If you want to know the difference between John Howard as Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd it is this: John Howard would never, ever have squibbed the chance to raise something important in such an important meeting, and the Leader of the Opposition squibbed it. He had a chance to raise climate change. It was so important to him that he spent all his time talking about what a great job the ALP had done in creating the alliance with the US.

It is slightly absurd when the opposition pretend that they believe this is an important issue and the very person who aspires to be the leader of this country does not have the courage to raise it with the leader of the free world. It was a golden opportunity at a golden time. Maybe he forgot, maybe it was a case of being too drunk to remember, but my feeling is that on this occasion he was absolutely sober. What happened? He did not raise climate change with the leader of the free world. The challenge is here: come in and deny it and say expressly and clearly that in the 45-minute meeting the Leader of the Opposition did raise climate change. He has not done that; he has lost that opportunity. He had a unique chance to do so. He had an opportunity to let every member of the ALP know that their leader cared so much about this issue but he could not even be bothered, or did not have the courage, to raise it with President Bush when given a unique opportunity to do so. This is about leadership; it is also about leaders, because you would never, ever see John Howard squib or miss a fundamentally important opportunity such as this, but we saw Kevin Rudd falter at a critical moment.

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