Howard's Environment Minster Stumbles, Bumbles & Heckles Questioners At Conference

[hatrack]

EDIT

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer responded with his second-day lunch speech, which he used to proudly showcase the greatest hits of the Howard Government policy on climate change. These ranged from the launch of the Greenhouse Office in 1997 to the latest $150million solar cells subsidy for those one-in-500 Australian households rich enough to afford this top-shelf technology.

By this stage, some senior corporate delegates had departed, leaving a less receptive audience than Mr Downer might have expected. Many of them were rowdily underwhelmed. Every time Downer mentioned the word nuclear, he was hissed. The first question he faced was whether he agreed with the proposal that politicians who told lies should be imprisoned. The second was a belligerent challenge on the true greenhouse cost of nuclear energy by anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott.

Next he was asked how he could claim to be helping to save rainforests in Asia when he handed out a brochure on the Government's climate change record. It was a tough room. What was surprising was how flustered Downer became. He heckled questioners from the podium and looked uneasy trying to explain to what extent he accepted the mainstream science of climate change, which had been so openly challenged by senior government ministers only a year ago.

It was a crowd hardly representative of the electorate, but the session did highlight a key problem for the Howard Government on climate change - by pretending that they haven't changed direction on the issue, when they so clearly have, their credibility on current and future initiatives is compromised. And it shows.

EDIT/END

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21739655-601,00.html

[Nihil]

1. Heh, if only ...!

> The first question he faced was whether he agreed with the proposal
> that politicians who told lies should be imprisoned.

I bet that the public of every country would vote almost unanimously
for this if it were ever suggested!