Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, today called on Prime Minister Rudd to sign up to the 2020 target range in the draft Bali decision in the spirit that it is intended – as a basis for negotiation – in order to keep the climate talks on track to a positive resolution.

Senator Milne, at the Bali climate conference in her capacity as Vice President of the World Conservation Union, said "Prime Minister Rudd's insistence that we must keep 'Waiting for Garnaut' before accepting a negotiating range for 2020 targets makes no logical or political sense.

"There is absolutely nothing inconsistent about agreeing to a science-based global negotiating range now, and developing a national position within, or beyond, that range in the following months or years.

"Indeed, that is what these negotiations are about. If every country had set its own domestic emissions target before beginning global negotiations on setting targets, there would be no reason to negotiate!

"This is about using the science to set the global parameters now, then diplomacy over the coming years to set specific targets for each country.

"By equivocating and delaying, Mr Rudd is squandering the goodwill towards Australia that he earned by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol so quickly. More importantly, he is jeopardising real progress at these talks towards a global agreement that could actually prevent runaway climate change.

"If Mr Rudd wants to be seen as a global leader on climate change, he must utterly repudiate Mr Howard's legacy of holding back progress for the last decade.

"The international community will be justifiably cynical about the arrival of a new PM promoting his ratification but refusing to sign up to a negotiating range and leading a delegation largely made up of the same climate ostriches from the big polluting industries who have attended the last decade of meetings at Mr Howard's invitation.

"Mr Rudd's challenge today is to convince the rest of the world that Australia is genuinely committed to the process and to the outcome. Any more equivocating, any more retreating in the company of Australia's fossil fuel friends, the USA, Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia, and he will be consigned to history's sidelines."