Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Apparently it is about leadership. You see, because we cannot change things, it is about leadership. Mr Rudd is apparently going to lead the globe. Is that it? Is that what we have to believe now—that Mr Rudd is going to lead the globe? Well, this is interesting: the new concept of unilateral movement from Australia. So what is it that we have to wait for next from Mr Rudd? Is Mr Rudd going to have regime change in Zimbabwe? Is Mr Rudd going to change the lives of the people of the southern Sudan and expel the Janjaweed? Is Mr Rudd going to fix up the crisis in North Korea? What else can Mr Rudd do in the unilateral movement by Mr Rudd? He is a global leader! But he is a global leader in the amorphous and the nebulous; he is not a global leader in the actual. He cannot actually do anything.

Now we see him over in America, and we are led to believe that Barack Obama, who tosses and turns at night, will reach over, pat Michelle on the shoulder and say, ‘Michelle, I can’t sleep tonight because I’m so worried about where Kevin is on climate policy.’ Is that the new global paradigm—that Hu Jintao will be calling back his troops from the 60th anniversary celebration of the communist government and saying, ‘We’ve got to talk about Kevin’s climate policy,’ and that Manmohan Singh in India will say, ‘We’ve got 1.1 billion people in poverty, but we can’t go further because we’ve got to worry about Kevin Rudd’s climate policy’? I do not think so.