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

The key question is whether these will contain anything of substance or just be existing policy re-launched or merely window-dressing.

The same day as the Prime Minister’s interview appeared, Mark Latham was reported in the media stressing the importance of climate change as an issue for Australia and repeating Labor’s long-held policy of ratifying Kyoto. 

The ALP’s commitments to ratify Kyoto, insert a greenhouse trigger in Commonwealth environment legislation, increase the renewable energy target to five per cent and in-principle support for emissions trading and greater energy efficiency measures mean the ALP’s climate policy is currently clearly more progressive than the Government’s.

However, despite this being the case, neither of the major parties current climate policies will protect Australia from climate change. They need to do more.

So what is needed to protect Australia from climate change – to prevent more frequent and severe droughts and bushfires and to save the Great Barrier Reef from coral bleaching and Australia’s ski fields from disappearing?

In what can often seem an overwhelming complex problem, the answer is refreshingly simple.

The latest science shows that Australia’s greenhouse pollution needs to be reduced by at least 60 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 if Australia is going be protected from climate change.

It will require strong and visionary political leadership to get there. But it’s not impossible - the UK Government has already committed to such a target.

In the last Federal election campaign, the politics of climate change shifted quite dramatically when the ALP announced it would ratify Kyoto. The Prime Minister’s comments opened the door for further progress on this key issue.

Greenpeace calls on both major parties to commit to reducing greenhouse pollution by at least 60 per cent by 2050.

This is the measure by which they should be judged because it is the only one which will protect Australia from climate change.