Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes:

(i)

that according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, August 2006 was the driest month in 106 years,

(ii)

the comments of the head of the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, Dr Michael Coughlan, on 4 September 2006, about the downward trend in rainfall and the upward trend in temperatures that ‘it’s very hard to find some other reason other than global warming for what is causing this’,

(iii)

the comment of eminent scientist, winner of the Prime Minister’s 2001 Environmentalist of the Year prize and member of the National Water Commission, Professor Peter Cullen, on 4 September 2006, that climate change is affecting Australia faster than he anticipated, and

(iv)

the comments by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) on 28 August 2006 that ‘I accept the broad theory about global warming. I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions’; and

(b)

calls on the Prime Minister to acknowledge the urgency of action to address climate change and to start by setting national greenhouse gas emission targets.

Question put.