Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Here he is. He continues to interject, because Senator Macdonald is one of the many people in the coalition party room who prefer not to believe the science. They prefer not to believe that climate change is happening, and they continue to refuse to accept our international obligation to act collectively with every other serious participant in the international system. They refuse to accept that obligation, because they are isolationists of the worst kind. The only possible way that climate change can be dealt with is if every nation takes steps to reduce our emissions and decarbonise our economy. That is the raw logic of international emissions reduction. Those people who sit over there and say that we have no obligations and that it makes no difference are simply wrong. When Australia was a holdout under John Howard, it made a huge difference in the way that the international community considered climate change, and when Australia, under a Labor government, committed to Kyoto and to climate action, it was truly significant. I was at the convention in Bali when that happened, and I can tell you that it made a huge difference in the way that other nations approached this.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Australia is a non-trivial actor in the international system, Senator Macdonald. You can talk our significance down. You can scoff and mock.