Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and I'm sure we all thank the honourable member for her question because it gives us the opportunity to make clear the foreign minister will be representing Australia at the UN Secretary General's summit. We have been invited as a country with an appropriate policy on climate change. It might not have occurred a few years ago, but it has occurred now, and Australia has been invited.

Australia will be very well represented at the summit by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who will be making clear this government's policies and approach. The leadership we bring to international forums, like the Prime Minister brought last week, like we are taking to COP this year, means we are in very good company arguing for the strengthening of the world's action on climate change. Australia is back at the table of climate leaders. We are no longer left out of international summits because our previous climate policy wasn't good enough to get an invitation.

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