Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the statement of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of 19 April that an aspirational target—and I quote:

… is code for a political stunt. An aspirational target is not a real target at all.

I also refer to the statement of the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources of 2 April, when he likened aspirational goals to—and I quote:

... New Year’s resolutions ... which we know we can’t meet.

Does the Prime Minister agree with the foreign minister and the environment minis-ter about the value of aspirational targets?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the foreign minister and the minister for the environment do great things on behalf of Australia in relation to the environment. I have not seen the exact context of the foreign minister’s statement but my recollection is that it was in the context of not having an action plan. I think he was referring to those who sit opposite. I know that the Labor Party are a bit disappointed that we actually reached agreement on the Sydney declaration. You could pick what they did a mile off. There they were, demanding the impossible so that they would be able to say, ‘You fell short of what was needed.’ It is an old political trick. The reality is that quite a lot of progress was made on getting the three major emitters to agree to the aspirational goal. It is not something that I believed all along was going to be achieved. I am delighted that it has been achieved.

I think we will make further progress at the Washington meeting later this month, convened by President Bush. It will be chaired by the Secretary of State and Australia will be represented at that meeting at a ministerial level. That will take the thing further. There will be some further progress made at the Bali meeting. I note that the Leader of the Opposition was talking about full voting rights. Is he suggesting that the United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto protocol but will be attending the Bali meeting, will have no influence on the outcome? This is the sort of narrow, legalistic, bureaucratic approach that he has taken to these things. The truth is that in Sydney, for the first time ever, we got China, America and Russia to agree on something—and that is a real step forward.