Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

So he is not going to participate in this debate? He is happy to sit on the sidelines and have a go at me but he is not going to participate in the debate. How typical of the Howard government! You sit there knocking and saying, ‘This is not good,’ but what do you actually do? You have been in power for 11 long years. Where is the evidence that this government has ever seriously understood the enormity of the challenge that climate change represents to the Australian community, to the Australian environment and to the Australian economy? The government know about it because their 2005 report Climate change: risk and vulnerability suggests that as a result of climate change our country is likely to see an increase in annual average temperatures of between 0.4 and two degrees by 2030 and between one and six degrees by 2070.