In the interest of getting a few more facts into the arena I will explain how Australia has, as Dr Gillespie says, "met and in fact exceeded our targets".

In 1997 Kyoto, while other industrialised nations undertook to reduce their emissions to 94.8 percent of 1990 levels, Australia refused to play serious ball.

The Howard government negotiators agreed to "only" increase emissions by 8 percent! But being allowed to continue to increase emissions wasn't enough.

The negotiators knew that in 1990 Australia's massive forest clearing had made up a quarter of total emissions. They also knew that Queensland's tough new land clearing laws meant such deforestation would never occur again.

Demanding that deforestation be included meant the 1990 emissions levels were seriously inflated and gave Australia more free passes.

Because our 2005 emissions were still high, the latest "target" of 26-28 percent of 2005 is also not a stretch. And it is not politicians who are doing the hard yards for this reduction anyhow. It's the farmers!

If their continuing reductions in land clearing are excluded Australia's emissions have actually increased by 7 percent since 2005. Almost unbelievable. But a fact.

It looks like whether we are meeting and beating our emissions targets is almost a matter of "opinion" after all.

Lesley Walker

Northcoate