Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

First, in relation to the 25 to 40 per cent issue, Senator Brown, you and I have had a discussion; you have asked me a question about this issue previously. That is one of the scenarios in one of the—from memory—working group annexes to the IPCC report. So it is one of the propositions that scientists have put as a basis for burden sharing in order to achieve various parts per million targets—550, 450 et cetera. They are, from some developing countries’ perspectives, one of the issues that they have placed on the table.

Can I say—and this is a very important issue—that the issue of how to best allocate reductions in emissions across countries around the globe is really at the crux of the international negotiations. And these negotiations have been made even more difficult on that front by the sort of development that we have seen in recent years, as the senator would be aware, in Professor Garnaut’s report. In his final report there is quite a graphic illustration of the effect of the increase to mid-century of major developing economies continuing to develop. So one of the key issues in the negotiations, Senator Brown, will be: what are developed countries prepared to do? And what are, to use the negotiating terms, the deviations from ‘business as usual’ measures that developing countries are prepared to engage in? So a lot of what was discussed in the context of Bali, and is discussed in the context of those two paragraphs of the Bali roadmap, which I know Senator Brown is familiar with, is essentially— (Time expired)