Responding to this morning's revelation that the Abbott opposition would make green carbon commitments only 25 years long instead of the global standard of 100 years, Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said:

"Tony Abbott is now proposing to waste even more taxpayers' money on globally unusable carbon offsets instead of investing in building a clean energy economy.

"The so called Direct Action Plan is a joke that was a hastily thrown together before the last election when Tony Abbott decided that the Coalition had to have a fig leaf so they could pretend they would do something about global warming without putting a price on pollution. One can only assume they never thought they would actually ever have to implement it.

"Mr Abbott and Mr Hunt seem to think that they can thumb their noses at science and at international agreements and just do whatever they want. If they use taxpayers' money to buy credits that are neither useful for cutting pollution nor usable on the global market, they will just demonstrate once again that they can't be trusted with the economy, can't be trusted with protecting the environment, and can't be trusted with the responsibility of government."