Federal election - ultimate K Rudd/Garrett enviro backflip ...

The 'Kyoto political sound bite' has blown up in Labor's face.

First it's 'we don't need China and India to agree to emission targets'.

"Mr Garrett's concession on not seeking binding targets on developing countries would allow China to back away from the Sydney declaration and avoid binding targets from the UN process on climate change beginning in Bali in December."

Then hold a crisis meeting.

Followed by 'we'll adopt the government's policy'.

Amazing ...

Excerpt from the Australian:

Garrett backflips over Kyoto call

30 October 2007

Garrett reverses position on greenhouse gases

Lunch-time crisis meeting held in Cairns

Labor still wants 'binding environment targets'

Peter Garrett's political credentials were in tatters last night after Kevin Rudd forced his environment spokesman to issue a humiliating clarification of Labor's greenhouse gas policy.

The backdown came after a Labor crisis meeting, which followed a day of sustained assault by John Howard and senior ministers on Mr Garrett's approach to a new post-Kyoto climate accord.

Mr Garrett started the day by committing a Labor government to signing a new global agreement on greenhouse gas emissions targets that might not include developing nations, such as China and India.

Last night, Mr Garrett issued a statement, reversing his position.

The Opposition Leader had initially endorsed Mr Garrett's statement, drawing fire from senior government ministers, who accused Labor of destroying Australia's position on climate change and threatening jobs.

The Prime Minister said Mr Garrett's commitment, in an interview with The Australian Financial Review and on ABC radio, was against Australia's interests and would put Australian jobs at risk.

"We can't have a situation where Australian industry is bound to take steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but competitive countries like China are not bound," Mr Howard said. "Mr Garrett doesn't have a plan to cut emissions, he has a plan to cut Australian jobs."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said committing to any new deal without the explicit support of developing countries was "absurd".

"You cannot be the government of Australia and go into negotiations saying 'developing countries don't have to make a contribution, we'll sign the agreement anyway' and think you are going to do something to solve this problem of greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

At a press conference in Cairns yesterday morning, where Mr Rudd and Mr Garrett unveiled a $200 million plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef, both men repeated the commitment.

Mr Rudd said countries such as Australia should be prepared to take the lead on signing new targets under a new international agreement so that big emitters in the developing world had no excuse not to adopt the same tough approach.

"We believe that leadership must come first from the developed economies, including Australia and the United States, and then countries and economies like China have nowhere to go," Mr Rudd said.

Earlier, Mr Garrett said on ABC radio that developed nations should make commitments at the Bali conference in December on climate change without waiting for developing countries to do so, and said Australia should ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

While it is Labor policy to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Labor had also supported moves, such as the Asia-Pacific Climate pact, to draw developing nations into binding targets.

The Bali conference, and recent conferences in Germany and the US, are directed at a climate change policy beyond 2012, the end of the Kyoto agreement. At the APEC meeting in Sydney, Australia succeeded in getting both China and the US - the world's biggest greenhouse emitters, neither being bound by the Kyoto Protocol - to agree in principle to consider binding targets. China's President Hu Jintao and US President George W. Bush both agreed to the Sydney declaration on greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Garrett's concession on not seeking binding targets on developing countries would allow China to back away from the Sydney declaration and avoid binding targets from the UN process on climate change beginning in Bali in December.

Only after Mr Howard and other Coalition ministers began to publicly question the policy, and the media began asking questions, did Mr Rudd, Mr Garrett and a team of advisers hold a crisis meeting at lunch-time in Cairns.

It was decided that Mr Garrett, who had made the initial commitment, should release a statement that "clarified" Labor's position and recognised the need to lock developing nations into targets for greenhouse gas emission cuts.

After Mr Rudd had flown to Townsville, Mr Garrett issued a statement to the media, emphasising that Labor's policy was to seek binding targets at the Bali conference for both "developed and developing" nations.

Mr Garrett's statement even italicised the "and" to make it clear he was repudiating his earlier comments.

"Appropriate developing country commitments for the post-2012 commitment period under a binding international agreement would be an essential prerequisite for Australian support for such an agreement," Mr Garrett's statement said.
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See- Labor's environmental plans in tatters.

K Rudd and Garrett - backflip boys ...