Developing nations 'resisted' climate deal
Updated
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has defended the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference amid claims China hijacked the talks.
Britain's climate change secretary Ed Miliband has accused China of blocking a major agreement at the United Nations talks. China has denied the claims.
A non-binding deal was struck at the conference between a number of countries, including Australia.
Mr Rudd admits some developing countries resisted a comprehensive deal for global action, but says the talks did achieve "breakthroughs".
"There were many countries in the Copenhagen negotiations who wanted to land a deal on climate change which was comprehensive," he said.
"We had some resistance from various developing countries against that."
"The important thing, however, is that the alternatives at the end of the day were this: the complete collapse of negotiations and no deal whatsoever, or the deal that we were able to deliver which provides three specific breakthroughs for the future."
But Mr Rudd says the summit's outcome will not have any effect on the Government's climate change policy, rejecting a push to lift Australia's targets for cutting carbon emissions.
The Greens have argued the deal struck at Copenhagen demands a greater cut from Australia than the Government's 5-25 per cent target range.
The Government says it will talk to other countries before finalising its target by February next year, but Mr Rudd says he is sticking to the existing target range.
"The undertakings that we made in the Government's statement in May of this year in the range of 5, 15, 25 [per cent] are entirely consistent with 2 degrees centigrade as a target," he said.
"That was made absolutely explicit in the documents we released at the time."
Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has raised doubts about Australia setting a carbon emissions reduction target above 5 per cent by 2020.
"I think we should go for the 5 per cent and we should only go higher than that if there are clear, binding, enforceable, transparent commitments from other countries," he said.
"And in the wake of Copenhagen we certainly can't be confident of that.
"I think it revealed to all of us just how reluctant the rest of the world is to make the kind of commitments that Mr Rudd was only to keen to see.
"What it revealed was that Mr Rudd was quite wrong to imagine that the rest of the world would jump on his bandwagon."
Mr Abbott also says the Government must explain how much its emissions trading scheme will cost if other countries do not introduce similar measures.
Topics: un-climate-change-conference-copenhagen-2009, climate-change, world-politics, australia, denmark
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