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

How do we bring about a leaders-level process to try and obtain an agreement at Copenhagen, given the fact that the officials-level progress so far has become bogged down? What we were able to do then, in consultation with one another, was to listen carefully to the briefing by the Danish Prime Minister, Prime Minister Rasmussen, on how we could bring about a framework agreement for Copenhagen, a strong global agreement in which the world agrees to the global goal of keeping global temperature rises within two degrees and where individual nations commit to specific actions to reduce emissions; one in which a global agreement is built on the basis of individual national actions, which becomes entirely relevant to the debate we have in this parliament on what happens with the future of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Sunday’s meeting of 19 leaders, co-chaired between the Mexicans and us and with the Prime Minister of Denmark in attendance, was an important step forward in seeking to bring about such a framework agreement. This will be difficult. It is also part of the challenge which the President of the United States now takes to Beijing for his bilateral visit to the People’s Republic of China, where the climate change discussions there are of such fundamental relevance to what now transpires in the lead-up to Copenhagen.

There were two clear and important outcomes from yesterday’s meeting in Singapore. One is that many leaders have for the first time indicated that they will be attending the Copenhagen meeting.

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