Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to respond directly to that point of order. As I hope Senator Brown would be aware, the European Union discussion is in fact the justification for their mid-term target proposal. That is the basis upon which they arrived at the mid-term target proposal. Clearly, there are a range of projections on how our current climate change parameters could affect future temperature rise. The IPCC report, which I assume Senator Brown is aware of, sets out a range of projections, and they are the result of the best efforts of scientists around the world to estimate the possible impact of current emissions levels and different trajectories of emissions on future temperature rise.

Let us be clear: this government absolutely recognises the need to tackle dangerous climate change. All in this chamber know that this was a significant issue at the last election. I would hope, notwithstanding the differences between the government and Senator Brown on a range of issues, he would at least acknowledge that the very first act of the Rudd Labor government was the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, something those opposite failed to do despite being party to the agreement and quibbling for years and years about whether they should ratify.

So our commitment to tackling this global challenge is clear. We recognise that it is a global challenge; it must be tackled globally. Domestically we will implement our policy agenda, but I will make it very clear to Senator Brown that we will do so responsibly, carefully and methodically and on the basis of inputs such as Treasury modelling and Professor Garnaut’s report.