Foreign minister Julie Bishop responds to Twitter outrage by saying Australia has accepted an invitation after group of 100 nations held a press conference

Australia has belatedly joined a “coalition of ambition” in the Paris climate talks – a loose grouping of more than 100 developed and developing countries including the US, EU, Canada and Brazil – aimed at countering a push by China, India and Saudi Arabia to water down aspects of the climate pact as negotiations run overtime.



Tony de Brum, foreign minister of the tiny Marshall Islands, and a founder of the new alliance, insisted Australia had not yet joined, and Australia was not represented at a press conference to announce new members – which also include Brazil, Switzerland, Iceland, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Luxembourg and Canada.

But Julie Bishop tweeted that Australia had joined the grouping in response to Twitter criticism.

De Brum later told the media, “we are delighted to learn of Australia’s interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition of high ambition here in Paris.”

He said all countries were “welcome to join” but needed to “bring your credentials with you.”

Bishop downplayed the importance of the group.

“This is not a negotiating coalition, this is a group of people who say we all share a view about an ambitious agreement – of course we do, we’ve said that from the outset ... we’re focusing on getting an agreement, not which groups we might be signing up to ... our priority is the text,” she told journalists.

Island nations urge Turnbull to echo Obama's climate change leadership Read more

While not a permanent negotiating bloc, the coalition is acting as a significant counterweight in the Paris talks to the big developing countries, whose negotiators spent most of Thursday night in closed door meetings arguing for a watering down of parts of the draft text prepared by the French presidency and forcing the French to extend the talks into Saturday.

While world leaders are no longer at the summit, the US president, Barack Obama, has also been trying to smooth the way for a deal by phone, calling the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. According to the White House read-out, the leaders “committed that their negotiating teams in Paris would continue to work closely together and with others to realise the vision of an ambitious climate agreement”.

Bishop said she still “felt a strong level of optimism” and the most important thing about deal, if it is clinched, would be the “united global effort” of 183 countries all agreeing to reduce their emissions.

Multiple sources said the Chinese negotiators in the second all-night “indaba” (a Zulu word for meeting) sought to dilute the agreement’s long-term goals and the proposed system to link country’s promises to reduce greenhouse emissions against a global “stocktake”. Saudi Arabia and India argued for changes that would even further weaken the deal.

Chinese deputy foreign minister Lui Jianmin dismissed the “coalition of ambition” as a “performance” and said China was arguing against the proposed goal that parties aim for “greenhouse gas emission neutrality in the second half of the century” because the meaning of the phrase was unclear.

“We heard of this so-called ambitious coalition only since a few days ago, of course it has had a high profile in the media, but we haven’t seen they have really acted for ambitious emissions commitments, so this is kind of performance by some members,” he said at a press conference.

“It is wrong to say China is blocking the concept of climate neutrality, we raised a concern because this is a new concept, there is no definition – we don’t understand, if you don’t know the concept, why you would put it in a legally binding agreement,” he said.

He also defended China’s position on another sticking point – the insistence by countries like the US and Australia that the Paris agreement should start the process of shifting all countries to a common system of reporting and reviewing emission reductions. The developing world wants to continue with the current two-tier system where obligations are born by rich countries.

“It is not only China’s request, it is a request from all developing countries, you should not focus on this as China’s request,” he said.

“Our capacity and national conditions means still we shall have some difficulties ... so the process needs to be more about encouragement. We need to avoid any punitive or intrusive measures,”

He said the US secretary of state, John Kerry, had spoken of the “domestic difficulty” the US would have if national targets were part of the legally binding agreement in Paris.

“I think all members would say for the Paris agreement we must have the United States on board as the largest developed world country in the world ... so for some issues, that should be considered in finding a solution acceptable to all,” he said.

Kerry told journalists he was hoping the marathon negotiations would see contentious issues “melt away”.

As negotiators tried to finalise the deal, leading scientists pointed out the disconnect between what negotiators were arguing about and what was actually needed to address global warming.

Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research in Britain said the current text was “somewhere between dangerous and deadly” for the most vulnerable nations in the world. He said it was weaker than the deal that had come out of Copenhagen and “not consistent with the science.”

Julie Bishop chided for 'joke' about rising seas flooding Marshall Islands Read more

After another day of private and small group meetings, the French will now produce yet another draft agreement – their third attempt at finding a compromise deal – on Saturday morning Paris time before the conference meets for what is supposed to be the final time.

Greenpeace said Brazil’s decision to join the coalition of ambition “could change the whole dynamic in the last closing hours of this conference” because major developing countries had been missing from the alliance.

Earlier in the conference, Bishop had smoothed over a spat with de Brum over her parliamentary mocking of claims by Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek that one of the Marshall Islands was already underwater. Plibersek had issued a transcript with the wrong name of the island she was referring to, but the island was under water.