Foreign Minister Julie Bishop wrote to Barack Obama's office after Great Barrier Reef climate change speech

Updated

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has revealed her office has written to Barack Obama's office outlining the efforts being taken to protect the Great Barrier Reef, following the US president's climate change speech last weekend.

Mr Obama used his speech at the University of Queensland to call on all nations to do more to tackle climate change but directed his message firmly at Australia by referring to the reef.

"Because I have not had 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," he said.

"And I want that there 50 years from now."

Ms Bishop took a swipe at the US president's comments during an interview with 7.30 on Thursday night, saying "there was an issue regarding [Mr Obama's] statement" and "we are demonstrating world's best practice in working with the World Heritage Committee to ensure that the Great Barrier Reef is preserved for generations to come".

"I think that President Obama might have overlooked that aspect of our commitment to conserving the Great Barrier Reef," she added.

Speaking to AM from New York on Friday morning, she said she had been surprised by the president's remarks.

"My office did send a briefing to the White House after President Obama's speech about our commitment and capacity to preserve the Great Barrier Reef," she said.

"I thought it important that he actually had the facts and the details of what we're doing to support the preservation and conservation of the Great Barrier Reef, and we are committed to it."

Ms Bishop said she had briefed the US Government on the steps being taken to protect the reef, days before Mr Obama's Queensland speech.

"I have met with the United States secretary of the interior, Sally Jewell, in Sydney just a couple of days before President Obama spoke at the University of Queensland, actually at the World Parks Congress, and I outlined to the US secretary of the interior in considerable detail Australia's commitment and capacity to preserve the Great Barrier Reef," she said.

"We have been able to not only halt but reverse the decline in the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef which is one of the causes of coral degradation.

"So we were very confident that we were more than up for the challenge of preserving and conserving the Great Barrier Reef for generations to come and that was a message that I sent clearly to the US secretary of the interior."

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek has labelled the comments "extraordinary" and accused Ms Bishop of "berating" Australia's most important ally.

"This is an extraordinarily petulant performance that just shows how stung the Abbott Government is by the fact that they tried to keep climate change off the G20 agenda and they failed in that endeavour," she said.

"Julie Bishop's not standing up for Australia, she's berating the president of the United States, a very good friend to Australia, because she's responding to his quite reasonable comment that we should protect our beautiful Barrier Reef.

"What an absurd situation that the Foreign Minister of our nation is insulting one of our closest friends because that friend wants to talk about climate change and the effect on our natural environment."

Reef in 'poor condition, continuing to deteriorate'

Jon Brodie, chief research scientist from James Cook University, said Ms Bishop had contradicted the Government's own report into the reef, released earlier this year.

"It says very clearly that the reef is in poor condition and continuing to deteriorate and that major actions are needed to stop that deterioration," he said.

"The reef's lost half its coral, lost most of its dugongs [and] seagrass is in poor condition."

Mr Brodie was the lead author of a 2008 scientific report for the Queensland Government on water quality issues affecting the Great Barrier Reef.

Last year he completed a scientific consensus statement based on the views of more than 50 scientists and policy experts.

He said the sustainability plan currently being considered to address the reef's decline was weak.

"The Government's own report on the reef very clearly says that climate change is a major issue for the reef," Mr Brodie said.

"And if we don't do anything about it then there's not really a lot of hope to have the reef restored to its good value."

Topics: climate-change, great-barrier-reef, world-politics, qld, australia

First posted