Australia’s Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, will head up the country’s delegation to the United Nations climate change talks in the South African city of Durban later this year.
Mr Combet will lead a delegation of 40 officials to the latest round of climate change talks in late November and early December.
Climate Change department secretary Blair Comley said Climate Change Ambassador Louise Hand would stand in as delegation leader until the minister arrived.
Mr Comley confirmed to a Senate estimates hearing that it was intended for the Minister to lead the delegation.
At the last such meeting, Copenhagen in 2009 when world leaders failed to reach a binding climate deal, Australia was represented by then prime minister Kevin Rudd and more than 100 officials
Just over half the 40-member delegation travelling to Durban will come from the climate change department.
“It (the delegation) will be more comparable to Cancun (in 2010), obviously, than Copenhagen,” Ms Hand said.
Australia now believes a legally binding global agreement on cutting carbon emissions should not be signed until 2015.
In the interim it wants countries to work towards establishing “a common international framework for mitigation targets and actions”.
Ms Hand said it was “completely daft” to imagine that every year countries should come up with a perfect legally binding agreement.
“If you can get incremental progress and make it stick and accommodate a large number of countries’ national interests, you’re doing very well,” she added.
