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

I do not know why people in this chamber have such an issue with China. Part of the reason for international climate change finance is that it is in our interests to encourage developing countries to take a different path and not follow the path that we have followed which is to become more highly polluting. We want to support low pollution development and low emissions development, and it is in Australia’s interest to do that. The Prime Minister has said that once a global agreement on climate finance is shaped Australia would always be prepared to put forward our fair share. There is no global agreement as yet as to what those long-term financing arrangements should be. Obviously that is one of the things that need to be worked through at Copenhagen, so I am not able to give you the answer you want, Senator Boswell. What I will say is that there has been a range of figures put out for the global contribution. There have been figures put out by the United Kingdom. I think Gordon Brown talked about a figure of 100 billion by 2020 from memory. The EU has more recently put out another proposal, and these are all looking at 2020 figures. These are still things which are being developed, and I again make the point that—