Wong links PNG diplomacy to climate change in Pacific
Foreign Minister Penny Wong says a "very substantial and serious" ministerial delegation to Papua New Guinea shows Australia is committed to engaging the Pacific region on climate change.
Ministers including Senator Wong will head to Port Moresby this week, as Chinese Premier Li Qiang ends his four-day Australian visit.
"That is a very substantial and serious ministerial delegation to Papua New Guinea and it is because this government understands the importance to Australia of the engagement in the Pacific," Senator Wong told ABC's Insiders program on Sunday.
"We want to be and are being more involved members of Pacific family," she added, before attacking the opposition over what she said was a record of walking away from the region and climate commitments.
The minister was asked about how Pacific island nations were watching the reawakening of the climate wars at home, after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would abandon an emissions target agreed to at a global summit in 2015.
Mr Dutton is "yet again abandoning the field in the Pacific", Senator Wong said.
"I still get, when I move around the Pacific, people remembering him joking about climate change by talking about the waters lapping at the door of Pacific nations."
She was referring to remarks caught on camera about Pacific nations when Mr Dutton was immigration minister in 2015, made to other coalition leaders including then prime minister Tony Abbott.
Mr Dutton later apologised for the jibe.
The opposition leader rekindled the embers of Australia's climate wars last week when he attacked the government's renewable energy plan, saying it would drive up power prices in the interim.
He insists the opposition remains committed to net-zero emissions by 2050.
"His policies will lead to higher electricity bills for Australians," Senator Wong said.
She went further by explicitly linking the opposition's about-face on climate with maintaining strong ties with Australia's closest neighbours, some of which are facing the prospect of relocating populations because of climate change.
"Peter Dutton is abandoning climate change which means higher prices at home and it means he is yet again abandoning the field in the Pacific."
