After ten long years, the Howard Government has run out of ideas to fix our water crisis and reduce our spiralling greenhouse gas emissions.

In today’s speech to the Committee for Economic Development Australia, John Howard failed to announce any new water or energy initiatives.

The Prime Minister has failed to offer anything new to Australians concerned about climate change, water shortages and rising petrol prices.

The disappointing speech comes after the Australian Greenhouse Office reported that excluding land use changes, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions rose by an extraordinary 25.1% between 1990 and 2004.

John Howard has had ten years to tackle climate change and prevent our water crisis. He keeps promising action, but we all know you can’t take John Howard at his word.

Instead of taking action on climate change, he has blocked every serious measure to protect Australia from dangerous climate change – ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, establishing an emissions trading scheme and supporting our innovative clean energy industry.

Instead of taking action to save our mighty Murray River, he has sat back, set up committees and watched the river run dry. Not one single drop of water has flowed into the Murray River as a result of the Howard Government’s Living Murray initiative.

Whilst the Government ignores the contribution energy efficiency can make, he opposes demand management when it comes to water.

Instead of protecting Australia’s energy security, John Howard is dangerously distracted by his nuclear fantasy.

If the Prime Minister was serious he would follow the lead of the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which showed the longer we delay action the greater the cost to the economy. The Business Roundtable supported Labor’s call for a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050 and market based mechanisms to drive the transformation to a carbon constrained economy.