JOE HOCKEY JUST DOESN'T UNDERSTAND FACTS

Media Release

Mark Butler MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment
Climate Change and Water

Date:  14 October 2014

Joe Hockey’s astounding ignorance of the facts about Australia continued to be on display in London today when he laughed at a BBC journalist who said Australia was the biggest carbon emitter per capita in the OECD.

The Treasurer said such a comment was ‘absolutely ridiculous’.

“What’s ridiculous is that Australia’s Treasurer doesn’t know this about Australia,” Shadow Climate Change Minister Mark Butler said.

“The nation’s most senior economic leader has embarrassed himself on international TV over a fact most school students would know.

The latest OECD Greenhouse Gas Emissions Index ranks Australia as the highest emitter per capita, leading Canada, the United States and nearly three times higher than the EU.

“So far Joe Hockey’s contributions to the global climate change debate have included petty remarks about wind turbines’ aesthetics, refusing to put climate change on the G20 agenda and now rejecting unambiguous facts about our carbon pollution as ‘ridiculous’.

“It just goes to show how this Government does not take climate change seriously. Climate change is an economic issue as much as it’s an environmental issue and Australia’s Treasurer should have at least a fundamental understanding of that,” Mr Butler said.

“This Treasurer’s ignorance is ‘absolutely ridiculous’,” Mr Butler said.