Australia now stands ready to assume its responsibility in responding to the challenge of climate change, according to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

Addressing the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Rudd said his first act as Prime Minister had been to sign the formal instrument for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This was because “we believe that climate change represents one of the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenges of our age”.

Rudd reiterated his government’s decision to await the Garnaut Review in mid-2008 before deciding on short and medium term targets for reducing greenhouse emissions.

• Listen to Kevin Rudd’s Address to the Bali Conference (11m)
  

This is the full text of Kevin Rudd’s Address to the Conference on Climate Change, in Bali.

His Excellency, the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, His Excellency, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, fellow national Leaders, Ministers, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, and all people of goodwill committed to the future of our planet.

I join with the Secretary-General and with the President of the Indonesian Republic in expressing our combined condemnation of this obscene terrorist attack in Algiers. An attack on innocent civilians, an attack on the agents of peace, those working for the United Nations, and therefore, an attack on us all. And I join with them in extending our thoughts and our prayers to those directly affected by this obscene attack. [Read more…]