Climate sidelined by bitter political divisions, says top bureaucrat

Entrenched political differences have created “a conspiracy of silence” around climate change that is preventing Australia from dealing with its challenges, the country’s former top public servant has said.

Martin Parkinson, the outgoing secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, told a Canberra audience that setting up the now-dissolved Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency in 2010 was a difficult task.

Parkinson was the department’s inaugural secretary and was Treasury secretary from 2011 to 2014. He also worked with the Hawke and Keating governments as an economist.