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

This will interest the member for Flinders:

It was not conditional on international action, it was obviously done in the context of international action.

What has happened today is this. On one side of the opposition benches we have the National Party, who are sceptical about climate change and want to deny its impact and to delay it. On the other side we have the Leader of the Opposition, who previously has held that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed. But, when the press releases came out today, I could not help noticing that the press release by the coalition announced that the coalition wants to be in touch with the rest of the world on this issue. I thought to myself: why would that trouble the opposition when, in government, they were perfectly happy not to be in touch with the rest of the world on this particular issue?

See this speech in context