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

Can I simply say: 12 years of neglect and denial, then 12 months of pretending to care and two minutes to change position. We do not have to look very far, because they had 12 years to take action on water and there was not one single drop of water returned to the Murray-Darling Basin as a consequence of environmental flows. And now the opposition leader, in the space of two minutes, goes from ‘no’ to ‘maybe’. This is what happens to a Liberal Party that pretends to care about climate change: a leader who cannot hold the same position on climate change from Lateline to Lateline Business.

I tell you the Rudd Labor government do care about climate change. We do care about the challenge of water and we acknowledge that it is a serious difficulty for families and irrigators and other communities in the basin. We also recognise the views and evidence presented by our leading scientists and we take them seriously. We have a clear policy agenda in place to deal with these issues and we will deliver to the Australian people.

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