A package of measures to improve innovation in the economy, unveiled by Malcolm Turnbull, has had an airing on the world stage with foreign minister Julie Bishop citing it at the Paris climate talks as evidence of Australia’s belief that “technological breakthroughs” will solve the climate change problem.



“Today in Australia the prime minister launched a new national innovation and science agenda to place innovation at the heart of our economy,” Bishop told ministers from around the world in her short, allocated introductory statement at the start of a week of high-level negotiations in Paris.

“Australia will lead by example in the way we invest in and reward technology … it will be innovation and technological breakthroughs that will ultimately bring the breakthroughs in our climate change responses,” she said.

Bishop arrived in Paris on Sunday to lead Australia’s negotiating team in the crucial final week, scheduled to finish late Friday.

Her statement contained no new promises and repeated Australia’s prediction that it will “meet and beat” its minimum emissions target for 2020. Australia is doing this with the help of the international accounting rules which allow the “carryover” of emission reductions from earlier commitment periods.

Leading European countries last week promised not to use “carry-over” but Australia has said it will not follow suit.

She described Australia’s 2030 target, to cut emissions by between 26 and 28% compared with 2005 levels as “ambitious”. Climate tracker - an international non government group that assesses national targets - describes Australia’s as “inadequate”.

Bishop said Australia is “transforming the way we generate electricity” via its renewable energy target, which was wound back by the Abbott government earlier this year.

And she repeated Australia’s promise to spend at least $200mn a year from its existing aid budget on climate activities, including $635,000 to help women take part in “climate related decision-making processes.”

On her first full day in Paris Bishop was meetingthe Japanese environment minister Tamayo Marukawa. Australia has joined 32 other countries in trenchant opposition to Japan’s decision to renew whaling in the southern ocean this summer and has said it is “exploring options for further legal action”.

The high-level negotiations were opened by the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius and the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon who implored the gathered ministers to reach an ambitious agreement and reminded them what was at stake.

Ban pointed to a “rising tide” of demands for a strong agreement from business, city administrations, Pope Francis and world faith leaders and the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who marched last Sunday. The assembled ministers “have a moral and political duty to heed those voices”, Ban said.

“The world is expecting more from you than half measures and incremental approaches, it is calling for a transformative agreement … the eyes of the world are upon you,” he said.

“Seven billion people want to know that you, the world’s leaders, have their interests at heart and those of their children.”

Fabius said the 150 world leaders who came to Paris last Monday had given the meeting a clear mandate. “You must succeed … it is up to you to take those decisions, you are political decision makers, in other words you are entrusted with the task of finding answers.”

Ban set out the elements of a strong Paris agreement, most of them still hotly disputed in the draft text before negotiators.

He said the agreement must contain a goal to limit temperature rise to less than 2 degrees, because for many states even 1.5 degrees of warming would have “grave consequences”; and include regular reviews, starting before 2020, so that countries could strengthen their national commitments “according to what the science tells us”.

It also had to include a single framework for measuring, monitoring and reporting how countries are meeting their emission reduction promises, and clear commitments from developed countries on financing poor countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to already locked-in warming.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said she was kept up at night by the vision of the next seven generations, asking her what she had done to solve the problem of climate change.

“The same question will be asked of each of you. May we all be able to stand tall and clearly say, we did everything that was necessary,” she told the ministers.

But the statements from leading negotiators raised all the same divisions that have dogged the talks for years.

Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, the South African diplomat who chairs Group of 77 and China negotiating bloc (which now covers 134 countries) said the 77 had not come to Paris to “renegotiate, rewrite or reinterpret” the original 1992 climate convention, which embeds the idea of “differentiation” of the contributions of developed and developing countries.

Countries like the United States and Australia say the categorisation of countries has changed dramatically over the past 23 years and the Paris agreement must include the expectation that all nations work towards the same rules for monitoring and reviewing their emissions reductions.