Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Further on the impact of climate change on the lower lakes, which I would have thought the Leader of the Opposition would be interested in, I draw his attention also to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007—again released when he was in office and many of those opposite were cabinet ministers. In the chapter on Australia and New Zealand, it says:

Australia and New Zealand are already experiencing impacts from recent climate change. These are now evident in increasing stresses on water supply and agriculture ...

Most recently, in January 2008, Mr David Jones, Head of Climate Analysis in the Bureau of Meteorology, said:

“Last year climate change became very evident in south-eastern Australia, with South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, ACT and the Murray-Darling Basin all setting temperature records by a very large margin …

Those are three sets of scientific reports. But in response to the question, ‘How do you know it is not climate change?’ the Leader of the Opposition says, ‘It is not climate change because it is not climate change.’ That is what he said. I suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that if he wishes to seriously engage in a debate about what you do in handling the challenges of water in the lower lakes then, firstly, you have a reasonable and rational program of assistance, which this government has put forward, and to which the government will add in the future; secondly, you deal also with a proper program to buy back water entitlements from this grossly over water-entitled river system—hence, the government’s buyback program; and, thirdly, you must act in the long term on climate change. I would say that the Leader of the Opposition has had a very bad 24 hours—first with the Nelson doctrine on interest rates and now with the Nelson doctrine of climate change denial.

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