Andrew Robb joins chorus of Barack Obama criticism

TRADE Minister Andrew Robb has lashed Barack Obama’s Brisbane climate change speech as wrong, misinformed and unneces­sary.

Minister for Trade Andrew Robb.

TRADE Minister Andrew Robb has lashed Barack Obama’s Brisbane climate change speech as wrong, misinformed and unneces­sary in a strong, direct criticism of the US President’s intervention from the G20 sidelines.

Mr Robb attacked the timing and the content of the speech and said he felt Mr Obama was not informed about Australia’s bipartis­an achievements in relation to the environment and climate change.

Mr Robb’s comments on Sky News’s Australian Agenda program came after Foreign Minister Julie Bishop backed Queensland government fury and concerns over Mr Obama’s speech, in which he queried management of the Great Barrier Reef.

It has also emerged that Mr Obama defied the advice of the US embassy, which had urged him not to couch his climate change comments in a way that would be seen to be disobliging to the ­Abbott government. Mr Obama said in Brisbane: “Here, a climate that increases in temperature will mean more extreme and frequent storms, more flooding, rising seas that submerge Pacific islands ... The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.’’

In the strongest comments by a government cabinet minister on the issue to date, Mr Robb said the content of Mr Obama’s speech was wrong and gave “no sense of the first-world, high-class efforts that Australia is making, successfully, to deal with that issue and to maintain that great asset’’.

“You know, we are spending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars every year, again both sides of politics have been doing this, to protect our greatest environmental asset in the Barrier Reef,’’ Mr Robb said, calling the speech “misinformed’’ and “unnecessary’’.

While it was quite reasonable to raise climate change in the course of the conversations at the G20, there had been 12 months of work put into shifting the focus of the G20 to greater growth and trade and investment.

Mr Robb said many people were lecturing Australia about meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets, but it had met the Kyoto targets while “most of the countries lecturing us did not’’.

“So … I don’t think others should be coming and lecturing us on climate change and the reduction in emissions in the way in which we have heard over many months from many different sourc­es around the world, including the President.’’