Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If I could return to the question I asked the minister before. Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough or perhaps the minister is a little bit tired at the end of a long week. I never said, ‘that no-one else was acting around the world,’ which the minister seemed to be trying to attribute to me. I never at any stage said that. But I do thank her for giving us a very clear indication last night of those countries that were currently contributing. I have never actually indicated that I thought that no-one else was acting. My question was: if no-one else did act from this point on, apart from Australia, what would the reduction be? I am sorry if I did not make myself clear, Minister, but I was trying to ask that very clear question.

I do take the minister’s point. She did give some answers to Senator Joyce. Maybe they were not quite clear enough for me to understand and I would then suggest that perhaps a lot of the listeners to this particular exchange probably could not understand them either. But I do not believe that the minister actually responded in terms of parts per million. Also, I do take the minister’s point: she said that there was a range of targets. I would think that commonsense would then say that, related to that, there would then potentially be a range of reduction levels. So perhaps the minister could reply to that in parts per million terms, because this is very important. It is important because one of the key questions that comes back to us—and, Minister, it comes as well from people who are trying to very clearly understand this—is that, if Australia is the only one from here on in who will be on the playing field, if you like, in the absence of anybody else coming on board what is the actual reduction going to be. I am trying to be very clear here. Could we have a parts per million response—