Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Today, Australia had an opportunity to embrace the future on climate change and instead we find ourselves, courtesy of the Liberal and National parties, dangerously anchored in the past. The Australian parliament had an opportunity to embrace the future on climate change today and instead the Senate, instructed by the Liberal and National parties, chose to anchor us again in the past. Instead of the next generation of Australians being able to look back on this day in August 2009 as a turning point for the future, they will look back on this day instead as the time when the Liberal and National parties put their own internal disunity ahead of what is necessary for the nation and the next generation of Australians.

As we listen to those opposite in recent times, we still hear debates reverberating about whether in fact the science underpinning climate change is valid. I find it remarkable in 2009 that those opposite, replete though they are with climate change sceptics, could still be engaging in such a debate. It is now more than 30 years since the first ever world climate conference called on governments to guard against potential climate change hazards. It has been 20 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed to produce its first report. It was 17 years ago, in 1992, that the international community acknowledged the importance of tackling climate change when it met at the Rio Earth Summit and created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In the period in which those opposite were in government, it was in the year 2000 that the previous government released a public consultation paper encouraging early greenhouse abatement action. That was in the year 2000—nine years ago. In 2003—

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