The major parties have failed to deliver an energy policy that protects Australia

As long ago as January 2000 business and political leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos declared that "Climate change is the greatest challenge facing the world at the beginning of the 21st century".

Many prominent scientists agree, with the UK’s Chief Scientist, Sir David King, making worldwide headlines recently with his assertion that climate change is a greater threat to the world than terrorism.

The mainstream scientific consensus is that climate change is real, caused primarily by human activities, in particular the use of fossil fuels, and is already happening.

In early August, the National Farmers Federation, formerly sceptical that climate change was happening, declared it was one of the key issues facing Australian agriculture.  The West Australian Farmers Federation went further, calling on the Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Last year the Business Council of Australia dropped its long-standing opposition to the treaty.

Groups as diverse as the tourism industry, engineers, insurance companies, the AMA and renewable energy companies are publicly calling for further action on climate change, including Kyoto ratification and a ten per cent renewable energy target.

The Government’s record on climate change speaks for itself. The Prime Minister has personally rejected the Kyoto Protocol on several occasions, citing reasons that fail to stand up to close scrutiny.  His Cabinet has rejected proposals for emissions trading, a carbon tax and to increase Australia’s target for clean, renewable energy. Instead, Government policy has, judged as a whole, clearly favoured the major greenhouse polluting energy sources and industries.

Their own polling, by the Australian Greenhouse Office, has shown that 50 per cent of Australians believe the Government isn’t doing anything to address climate change.

It looks as if the Government is beginning to realise that this is an electoral weakness.

In The Sydney Morning Herald interview, the PM confirmed that the Government would release more environmental policies "across the board" during the election campaign, including ones to address climate change.

This is about as clear an admission as you will get that the Government’s energy white paper failed to convince voters that it was doing enough on climate change.

The Government has been forced to rethink its strategy and has decided to respond with further policy announcements.