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

Thank you again to Senator Crossin for yet another question on climate change and for her continued interest in this important issue. Senators would be aware that for most of their 11 years in office the Howard government denied that climate change was happening. But senators will probably remember that at the eleventh hour before the 2007 election John Howard had a late conversion. He said in February of that year, ‘There can be no argument that greenhouse gases are having an adverse impact on the Earth’s environment.’ Subsequently, that government commissioned the Shergold report, which recommended the commencement of emissions trading in 2011 or 2012, come what may—in the words of the now Leader of the Opposition. That report was endorsed and it became government policy.

Even more interestingly, if you look at this document I am holding—and those of us who ran in the last election might remember this light blue coalition government policy document for the 2007 election—and if you open to the executive summary, you see that one of the dot points, one of the commitments, of the Liberal Party and the National Party—