Julie Bishop apparently "went bananas" over Abbott appointing a chaperone to attend the Lima COP with her for climate change talks.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald ,
"Fairfax Media reported on Sunday that Mr Abbott personally requested Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb - one of the Coalition's early opponents of emissions trading - accompany Ms Bishop to climate change talks in Lima, Peru later this month."
According to Fairfax Media this move was a clear sign that Abbott is worried that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop would go "too green" at the COP20. Mr Robb would be there to ensure that any new domestic carbon reduction commitments would be structured around Australia's economic impacts.
The Australian Financial Review reports sources stated that Ms Bishop demanded a “please explain” from Mr Abbott, “Julie went bananas at the PM.”
Julie Bishop heads to Lima next week for COP20 in the midst of major warning for the fate of our Great Barrier Reef. Even if we meet the 2°C warming target, extreme damage will still occur and action to protect the reef must be taken now!
IPCC scientist Hans Otto Portner, said even if the world managed to hold warming to an average 1.5°C, more than half the world’s coral reefs could be lost.
Bishop has not actually shown any form of a green conscious shift, last month she reprimanded Barack Obama for saying that the Great Barrier Reef was under threat. She said that Obama had ignored national efforts to manage the reef and climate change was not a threat.
“It’s not under threat from climate change because its biggest threat is nutrient runoffs from agricultural land the second biggest threat is natural disasters, but this has been for 200 years,” Bishop told Fairfax Media in New York.
Australian scientists have dismissed her comments, and in Lima, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change state the world's reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, are facing major threats due to Climate Change. The adamancy of scientists and leaders in Lima right now on the extreme dangers of Climate Change will make it hard for Bishop to attend with a purely economic attitude.