The federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, has brushed aside criticism from the Liberal premier of Western Australia that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions targets are too soft.



Colin Barnett has backed Barack Obama’s call for stronger emissions reductions targets, saying: “We can be bolder in Australia, including in WA”.

He said the US president’s speech to students on the sidelines of the G20 summit was “a call to arms, not only to Australia but to other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific area”.

“Australia, and I think all of us, do need to lift their game,” Barnett told the West Australian newspaper.

Hunt said Australia was already doing more to tackle climate change.

“We have just passed one of the most significant pieces of climate legislation in Australian history. We are reducing emissions without a tax,” he said of the government’s Direct Action policy.

He praised Australia for being one of the few countries that had met and exceeded targets pledged under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.

“We achieved our targets and beat them by 6%. Other countries made pledges and then failed to meet them,” Hunt said.

In the days before the G20 summit in Brisbane, China and the US announced a deal on cutting carbon emissions.

Obama used his address to students at the University of Queensland to urge other countries to act on climate change before it was too late.

“If China and the United States can agree on this, then the world can agree on this. We can get this done. And it is necessary for us to get it done,” Obama said on Sunday.

“I have not had time to go to the Great Barrier Reef and I want to come back, and I want my daughters to be able to come back, and I want them to be able to bring their daughters or sons to visit. And I want that there 50 years from now,” he said.

Barnett said: “Obama appealed to those young people and their applause gave me a message that the younger generation is looking for more to be done on climate change – and I’ll tell you that chatting to a couple of politicians leaving afterwards, they had a similar view.”

He admitted it was in Western Australia’s interests as a producer of natural gas for the focus to shift from coal.

“While it’s a bit of a West Australian view, for me the most effective thing that Australia can do is to ensure that more of our new power generation is at least gas-fired and not coal,” Barnett said.

“That’s not popular on the east coast but it’s a costless and simple way to reduce emissions to have a power generation system in the future across Australia which is based on natural gas.”

Barnett’s comments put further pressure on the prime minister, Tony Abbott, who again spoke in support of coal during a closed door meeting of G20 leaders.

Australia was forced to adopt stronger language relating to climate change in the official G20 communique, despite earlier insisting that the meeting was predominantly an economic forum.