Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Minchin. I ask: does the minister recall that, when scientists were warning this time last year of extreme drought and fires for the summer, the Prime Minister said that he was sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions about climate change? Does he further recall that the Prime Minister said in February of this year that the jury is still out on the relationship between climate change and drought? If so, do the Prime Minister and the government still believe, in the face of ongoing drought and terrible crop failure predictions today, that the jury is still out on the correlation between the intensity of drought on the one hand and the higher temperatures, higher evaporation rates and changed rainfall patterns of climate change on the other hand?