Don Henry, Executive Director of Australian Conservation Foundation
The approach outlined by the Prime Minister this morning is a slow way to address the urgent problem of climate change. Labor will have to deliver much more before Australians can have confidence that our pollution levels will stop going up and start going down. A citizens’ assembly would take 12 months to tell us what we already know – that the majority of Australians want action to cut pollution.

Dr Gilly Llewellyn, WWF-Australia’s Manger of Conservation
Labor’s climate policy fails to deliver the urgent action needed, and continues to ignore loud and clear community support which already exists for an emissions trading scheme.The idea of a new citizen assembly to determine climate policy is an insult to the millions of Australians who voted for an emissions trading scheme in 2007. It is also an insult to the 4,000 people and organisations who made submissions to the previous consultation process, the Garnaut Review.