Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, did a taxpayer funded opinion poll in 2003, which has not been publicly released, find that four per cent of Australians believed that climate was ‘a top-of-the-mind issue’? Did a similar secret taxpayer funded poll in 2006 find that figure had dramatically increased to 30 per cent, and that 88 per cent believed climate change was an important political issue? Will the Prime Minister confirm the existence of this taxpayer funded polling? Isn’t it the case that the only thing the Prime Minister is concerned about is the change in political climate, not climate change itself?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I could ask a rhetorical question: I thought we weren’t meant to be doing these opinion polls. I can tell you that I do not know—I will find out—whether any government funded opinion polls produced those results or not. I am very happy to find out and to let the honourable member know. I am perfectly happy to do that. It does not alter the fact that you want a 20 per cent cut in emissions by the year 2020. Those are the figures that are relevant. I do not think the member for Kingsford Smith really knows what he committed his party to when he made that promise. I think the member for Kingsford Smith, instead of examining the entrails of any opinion poll, ought to go away and do his homework and work out what the implications would be for Australian industry, Australian consumers, Australian motorists and a whole lot of other groups in our community of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent in 13 years on 1990 levels. I wonder: does he really know what the implication of that is? Does he really know what he has committed his party to by making that statement?