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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I thank the minister for his answer and inform him that his conclusions drawn from the IPCC report are absolutely wrong: they related to climate sensitivity and not to the projected climate temperatures expected by 2100. Now that the minister has conceded that the Australian government has not made a decision about what constitutes dangerous climate change and therefore does not have a target—if you have not made a decision about what your objective is then you have not got a target—can the minister explain how he makes decisions on climate change policy, including subsidies to various technologies like clean coal? How does the minister contribute to international discussions on the post-Kyoto emission abatement task if he does not have a clear sense of what the upper temperature increase ought to be?