Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on how our strong bilateral and APEC relationships have delivered benefits to the Australian people, especially the Sydney declaration on climate change? Are there any alternative views and what is the government’s response? 

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First, can I thank the honourable member for Hughes for her question and say how much I appreciate her interest in the issue, particularly her interest in APEC. I do not think there is any doubt that the APEC meeting in Sydney was one of the most successful APEC meetings ever. It was an extraordinary success, and that is certainly the feedback I have had from the delegations that were there.

At the centre of that APEC meeting was the Sydney APEC Leaders Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development, which was the first time that developed and developing countries together have agreed to a commitment to stabilise and eventually reduce CO₂ emissions. That was an extraordinary feat of diplomacy. The House might be interested to know that, at the outset of the week, a majority of economies were opposed to the Sydney climate change draft and, through the course of that week, we gradually managed to negotiate a successful outcome. How could we do that? We were able to do that because, amongst other things, we have very strong relations with two key countries: the United States of America and China. Because of the strong position we have in dealing with those countries, we were able to get a good outcome. This was a commitment not just with a bold agenda but with an agenda for practical action to reduce energy intensity—that is, to increase energy efficiency, if you like—by at least 25 per cent by 2030 and to increase forest cover by 20 million hectares by 2020, storing 1.4 billion tonnes, or 11 per cent, of annual global carbon emissions.

This may not be of any interest to the opposition, which apparently thinks this is not important, but this is the difference between the government and the opposition. We are able to leverage our very strong relations with countries like the United States, China, Japan and so on to achieve real and practical results. The Leader of the Opposition, in his speech to the Labor Party national conference on 27 April, called climate change ‘the great moral, economic and environmental challenge of our time’. Last week, the Leader of the Opposition had 45 minutes with the world’s most powerful person, the President of the United States of America. During a 45-minute meeting with the world’s most powerful person, you would expect there to be a lively discussion about the great moral, economic and environmental challenge of our time. If the Leader of the Opposition were doing not just what PR companies told him to do but what his heart told him was a great challenge that we had to deal with, wouldn’t he use 45 minutes with the President of the United States to make that case? Wouldn’t he spend time urging the President of the United States to ratify the Kyoto protocol, which is so much the heart of the Labor Party’s position?

If there has been anything revealing in recent times about the Leader of the Opposition and his insincerity and weakness, it is his failure to discuss an issue that he thought was the most important moral, economic and environmental challenge of our time with the President of the United States in a 45-minute period. It may be that he was too frightened to argue with the President. He may not have had the courage to do that. But if that is not the case then I think the Australian people deserve an explanation.