The fact that Australians should feel proud of what they’ve achieved in reducing greenhouse gases is something that the rest of the world is looking at. — former Environment Minister Ian Campbell, 23 October 2004

This government will support an international framework for emissions trading provided it has everybody in it. If we sign something that doesn’t have all the world’s emitters, we are betraying the interests of all of the resources industry and we are betraying the future of our children. — John Howard, 31 October 2006

Clearly, if we can reach an understanding between all of the world’s major emitters and all of the nations of the world, it is possible to have an international emissions trading system. That is a path forward to which this Government is committed. – John Howard, 1 November 2006

I don’t want a situation where our country is panicked into doing things that put a disproportionate burden on us. — John Howard, 2 November 2006

Unless we lay the foundation over the years immediately ahead of us to deal with the (climate change), future generations will face significant penalties and will have cause to criticise our failure to do something substantial in response. — John Howard, 14 November 2006

The whole climate change phenomenon has informed and underpinned the policies of the Australian Government for more than a decade. — Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, 3 February 2007

All of my government’s many initiatives to tackle global warming and its symptoms are sensitive to the nature of our industries, our major power sources and our natural abundance of fossil fuels. We are not going to sell out the many thousands of workers in the mining and power generation industries by hastily agreeing to proposals that disadvantage Australians. — John Howard, 2 April 2007

Everybody agrees that you have to have some price on carbon to effectively deal with the emissions problem. And the best way of delivering a price on carbon is through a market mechanism, namely an emissions trading system. That … is the centrepiece of any long-term strategy and I’ll be saying quite a bit about this whole issue a few weeks after we’ve received the report. — John Howard, 9 May 2007