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

Self-evidently, what we had for the vast majority of the years those opposite were in government is a failure to act on climate change because they did not believe it was real. I would just like to remind them that yesterday we went through the policy they went to the election with, the policy that they were elected with, which was to support emissions trading. But I would remind them that they might want to have a look at the booklet called Australia’s Climate Change Policy that was issued whilst they were in government. It has a lovely little foreword by John Howard and it goes on to say, ‘Australia’s environment is particularly vulnerable to global climate change.’ It goes on to talk about the risk to the reef and to agriculture and says that Australia’s economy needs to prepare for a carbon constrained future. The question is why are they turning their back on what was even John Howard’s policy. And it is very simple: they went to the election— (Time expired)