Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 46:42 to 1:24:35
Debate over the use of savings from a coalition-era international partnership program to fund current climate diplomacy initiatives.
Topics: Government spending, Pacific relations, Climate change
Speakers: Hon Murray Watt, Varun Ghosh, Unknown Speaker
consistently voting with countries like Russia on climate matters uh at COP events. Uh so the then Morrison government including Minister Taylor created the $500 million strategic international partnership investment stream um to persuade countries as I say to overlook our voting behavior as a country and the cost of preop has been fully funded from that saving. So I I can only assume that the coalition given its demands for savings by this government would support the fact that uh savings were found to fund the preop countries to overlook? Well, as you would recall, Senator Brown, um during the time of the former coalition government, Pacific leaders were dismayed at the approach of the then government towards climate change matters. Um the most celebrated example, of course, is that um what Mr. Dutton would have referred to as a joke, but a really offensive statement towards the Pacific. Um Pacific leaders were dismayed. We Australia under the former government as I say was consistently voting with countries like Russia at COP and other climate change events. The then government created this program this $500 million program which would have been able to be used to fund particular programs in the Pacific. Um our government um has not needed to uh persuade Pacific countries of our record on climate change because we're actually working with them. uh and so we were able to fund this event by removing those funds from that coalition era program. So I think you called it a rep prioritization and that would be a fair way to call describe it.
>> Thanks. Thanks. Thank you, Minister. It's now 9:50. So to permit um senators to attend the statements in the House relating to Dr. Haines uh will now adjourn uh for uh 40 minutes until 10:30. So the committee stands adjourned until 10:30. Thank you very much.