Joe Hockey says climate change is no impediment to economic growth, and has downplayed the significance of pledges by the United States and China to cut emissions.

The treasurer insisted the G20 remained focused on the “hard work” of boosting growth and establishing an infrastructure hub.

After the speech by US president Barack Obama catapulting climate change onto the G20 agenda and a plea from the UK prime minister David Cameron for Australia to make new climate commitments, the treasurer was asked on ABC TV whether he accepted climate change was potentially one of the biggest impediments to growth.



“No, I don’t. Absolutely not,” he told the Insiders program.



He went on to downplay the post-2020 emission reduction commitments unveiled by Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping on the eve of the G20 summit in Brisbane.

“Look at China. China is going to continue to increase emissions until 2030. It is going to continue increasing emissions to 2030,” he said.

Hockey questioned Obama’s ability to deliver on his new pledge, saying: “Barack Obama has to get any initiative on climate change through a hostile US Congress … That’s up to the US but so far he hasn’t had great success. You never know. Hopefully he can do what he wants to do as president but we all face those challenges – but we have to do what we believe to be right for the nation; he is doing what he believes to be right of the United States.”

The US agreed to cut emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and China pledged to ensure its greenhouse gas output peaked by 2030. China also vowed to draw 20% of its energy needs from zero-emission sources by 2030.

Obama is relying on executive powers to implement the deal, but the Republican-dominated Congress could seek to frustrate his agenda by attaching “riders” to budget bills. Republicans have signalled their intention to target Environmental Protection Authority regulations on power station emissions.

Australia is committed to cutting its emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020, but is yet to reveal its post-2020 pledge.

The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, said Australia would “ensure that any commitment we make balances our national economic interests with the interests of our environment”.

Speaking to Channel 10’s Bolt Report on Sunday, Bishop said Obama “would be thinking about his legacy” and she expected a number of nations to give similar statements about their proposed commitment before next year’s Paris climate summit.

But she sounded a warning over the strength of commitments.

“The big issue, of course, will be whether countries take the step from making statements about what they are going to do to actually committing to legally binding targets and commitments and that is what happened in the Copenhagen climate change conference [in 2009]. It was all very well to talk about it, but people didn’t commit to legally binding targets that would be backed by legally enforcing penalties.”

Obama said in his speech that no region had more to lose from rising temperatures than the Asia Pacific, and Australia in particular, citing threats to the Great Barrier Reef and the prospect of more bushfires and longer droughts.

“No nation is immune and every nation has a responsibility to do its part,” Obama said.

Hockey said he did not hear Obama’s speech. “I was in meetings with finance ministers. We’re the ones doing the hard work on the treadmill … He is entitled to give a speech.”

Cameron joined calls for Tony Abbott to do more to tackle climate change, saying “countries that have so far done the least have to think about what more they can do”.

Cameron told Britain’s Sky News that every nation needed to “put more on the table” if the world was to reach a successful agreement in Paris next year on reducing greenhouse emissions after 2020.

“Countries that have so far done the least have to think about what more they can do. I’ve had good and friendly discussions with prime minister Abbott about that,” he said, adding that even those unsure of climate science should regard action as a form of “insurance”.

“I hope [Australia will] do everything they can in the coming months to look at what more they can deliver, because when it comes to Paris if we want to get a global agreement everyone is going to have to bring something to the table.”

Abbott had long argued climate discussions would distract from the G20’s economic policy focus and should be left to other UN-led meetings, but the world leaders gathering in Brisbane have made sure it is high on the agenda.



Hockey confirmed Australia had included climate change in the first draft of the G20 communique. Since then, negotiators have been struggling against Australian objections to strengthen the language, and these discussions continued as late as Saturday night.



China’s vice minister of finance, Zhu Guangyao, told reporters at the G20 on Saturday that China would work hard to ensure its emissions peaked before 2030.

He said that if the Chinese economy developed too fast for the environment to sustain “we must make adjustments to our policies in a timely way so we can minimise the impact on our environment”.

Zhu did not directly answer whether China’s demand for Australian coal would increase, stay stable or decrease as a result of the commitment.