|
Back to News
Home |
Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
warned there was no "magic pudding" solution to climate change on
Thursday as he lashed out over the defeat of his flagship
carbon-trading scheme.
Rudd mocked the opposition Liberal Party's reported plan to slash
pollution with energy efficiency measures as a "bit of fairy dust"
and called for "wiser heads" to pass the bill at the third attempt.
The defeat of the legislation, aiming to cut carbon emissions by
between five and 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, leaves Rudd
empty-handed as he heads to next week's UN climate talks in
Copenhagen.
"For the Liberals now to say that there is a magic pudding solution
on climate change, that somehow if you throw a bit of fairy dust at
it and say that bang, it all happens, without any adjustment
challenges, I don't think that's being fair dinkum," he told
reporters.
Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was voted down 41-33
on Wednesday in the upper-house Senate, where neither the government
or opposition Coalition holds a majority.
The prime minister, who passed up the chance to call snap polls
after the bill's second defeat, said he had "always" wanted to serve
a full three-year term and urged an opposition re-think over the
Christmas break.
"What I have said all along is that I believe that governments
should serve their full term. That's always been our intention," he
said.
"That is why the government... will re-introduce the Carbon
Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation (so) that over this long
summer cooler heads, calmer heads, more responsible heads within the
Liberal Party may prevail."
Rudd warned the opposition had now taken a more "extreme" position
on global warming than their ex-leader and former prime minister
John Howard, who famously failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
"It seems that the Liberal Party are now saying they don't want an
ETS (emissions trading scheme) at all, which would put them into a
more extreme position than Mr. Howard," he told reporters.
Climate change sceptic Tony Abbott, who ousted Malcolm Turnbull as
Liberal Party leader during the turbulent ETS debate, has said he
will oppose the third reading of the bill, which he describes as a
"great big new tax".
Rudd also took a humorous swipe at his new sparring partner's choice
of swimwear, after Abbott was pictured wearing only
"budgie-smuggler" Speedo trunks and a lifesaver's cap in Monday's
newspapers.
"If there was a referendum tomorrow between budgie-smugglers and
boardies (board shorts), I think I would be voting for boardies," he
smiled.
"There should be certain things the Australian people are protected
from, and that's national political leaders so attired."
Rudd, who will be a "friend of chair" at the December 7-18
Copenhagen talks, campaigned on a strong environmental platform and
ratified Kyoto as one of his first acts after taking office in late
2007.
The meeting, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change, is aimed at thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol,
which expires in 2012.
|
|
