Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

If Senator Carr was not interested in getting elected he would not be making such deliberately misleading statements to the Australian public. What Senator Carr knows is that immediately upon coming into government a previous minister for the environment pursued the issue of whether or not Australia should have an Australian Greenhouse Office, and we established it in 1998—some nine years ago. And yet Senator Carr deliberately seeks to mislead the Australian people by asserting that we had not engaged on the issue of greenhouse gases and climate change until right now, before an election. Senator Carr had better explain to the Australian people why, if his assertion is true, we established the Australian Greenhouse Office nine years ago. The fact is, and I have pointed this out before, of all the questions on climate change, the coalition has asked the most questions since 1996 up until the last 12 months. (Time expired)