Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Actually, since I was climate minister in 2007 and in the 2007 campaign, where we campaigned for an emissions trading scheme, which you also supported at the time. I've been on the record for many years—well over a decade, which shows you I've been here a fair while—in accepting the scientific advice about the consequences of climate change. I recall reading a CSIRO report, many years ago, in the last decade, which forecast that unmitigated climate change would see the Goyder Line move south of Clare. For those of us who come from South Australia and understand what that means, that was horrifying. That is what has informed in part my commitment and our government's commitment—certainly in government last time—to implement an ambitious emissions trading scheme. I realise you weren't there, but your party voted with the coalition against it. That's why in government we delivered a climate scheme when the Greens did decide to vote for it. It was perhaps not quite as important, but it was ambitious nevertheless. And that is why for nine years we in opposition have argued each election, notwithstanding the challenge of that, for a clear, credible, ambitious position on climate. I am very pleased that after years of irrationality the Australian community has returned not only a government—