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

I thank the member for bringing this matter into the House so that we can debate it. The member has an interesting challenge. He somehow has to white out 11 years of inaction, denial and obfuscation by the previous Howard government, which failed to take climate change seriously. So what he is really doing in the House is repositioning himself. He is showing, as the opposition spokesman on these matters, that he is aware of the seriousness of those issues. I do commend that, because members opposite—including this member—had to labour for years and years under the burden of a government for which it was only symbols. The member comes in here and accuses this party of being a party preferring symbols over substance. And yet they were led by a leader who for 11 years refused on a symbolic basis not to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

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