Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I have made this point on a number of occasions now: our government is committed to effective action on climate change, but we also understand that, in order to address the challenge of climate change and in order to secure meaningful reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, we need a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What would not help the environment is if Australia took measures domestically to just shift emissions with jobs and economic activity overseas where the same level of economic output and emissions would be higher. That would actually leave the global environment worse off. We are not in favour of imposing sacrifice on the Australian people that not only makes no difference to the environment but actually makes the situation worse when it comes to addressing climate change and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. We will continue to pursue— (Time expired)