Over 100 world leaders gathered in New York for the Leader’s Climate Summit to respond to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call “to galvanise and catalyse climate action”.

While leaders such as US President Barack Obama attended and declared climate change a greater threat than terrorism, and China’s Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli announced his country aimed to cut its carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2020 (compared to 2005 levels), Australia was strangely quiet.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott didn’t attend, instead sending Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop in his place, which some media took as yet another sign that Mr Abbott doesn’t take climate change seriously — indeed, some foreign media and foreign governments are starting to ask questions about where Australia stands on the issue. 

The Marshall Islands foreign minister said he was baffled and concerned about our government’s stance on climate change.

 Gambia’s climate change minister (representing 54 of the least-developed nations at the summit) said Australia’s target of five per cent emissions reduction by 2020 (on 2000 levels) was disappointing. 

Prominent online magazine Slate called us “the dirtiest polluter in the developed world” and wheeled out Mr Abbott’s “climate argument is absolute crap” quote again.

 Pulitzer Prize-winning website Inside Climate News talked recently about the “Canada-Australia axis of carbon”.

So what is the Abbott government doing about it? Details on the government’s “direct action plan” have been scarce and it appears our reputation on climate change is becoming increasingly tarnished overseas. 

The time has surely come for the federal government to tell us and the rest of world where it truly stands on the matter.