Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I wholeheartedly welcome and support this motion from Senators Barnett and Payne, welcoming the news of recent progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which are basically to improve the lot of the most poverty stricken people on earth by 2015. However, I cannot allow it to go past without recounting events earlier this decade. When the Earth Summit was held in Johannesburg, the then Howard government made it part of its mission to that summit to pull the rug from under the very targets that we are looking at here. In particular, it ensured that that summit failed to reach any agreement on goals to alleviate the then onrush of climate change, which made all of these goals much more difficult.

It is good that now some good-hearted senators on the coalition opposition benches are moving towards fostering this alleviation of poverty. I only wish this was consistent and it had been part of Howard government policy in 2003, when the then Australian government became a stopper to the globe reaching for these very worthy goals for its poorest citizens.

Question agreed to.