Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say that there might have been times when accusing me of a diatribe was close to the truth, but perhaps not in response to this particular question. I was simply making the point that China has the world's largest installed renewable energy generation capacity, that China has indicated its intention to introduce an emissions trading pilot scheme in a number of provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, and the World Bank has indicated there is a prospect of these schemes being expanded to a national scheme by 2015.

In relation to the detailed information that the senator has sought about what was said by whom and when, between a particular non-government organisation and the department of climate change, unsurprisingly I do not have that information to hand. I will certainly see if there is anything further that can be provided to the senator. But I would again say that the senator has a long history of asserting nothing is happening internation­ally. With respect, we believe he is wrong and I think the facts demonstrate that he is not correct.