Minister for the environment Greg Hunt took a shot at opposition leader Bill Shorten last night on Twitter, but it didn't exactly go as planned.
Extraordinary. Bill Shorten goes to Cairns and fails to even acknowledge the Great Barrier Reef let alone offer any support.
Hunt was referring to Shorten's apparent failure to acknowledge the huge climate crisis facing the Great Barrier Reef. But most people on Twitter focussed on the minister's own shortcomings.
Some even brought up Hunt's claim in court recently that Australia's largest coal mine would have no "substantial" impact on climate change.
The Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing a huge, and unprecedented, coral bleaching event, caused by climate change.
"Almost without exception, every reef we flew across showed consistently high levels of bleaching, from the reef slope right up onto the top of the reef," convener of Australia's National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, Terry Hughes, told BuzzFeed News regarding his most recent expedition to the reef in March.
"We flew for 4000km in the most pristine parts of the Great Barrier Reef and saw only four reefs that had no bleaching. The severity is much greater than in earlier bleaching events in 2002 or 1998."
Hunt responded to the backlash this morning with a reminder that the Coalition had pledged $171 million for water quality in last week's Budget.
However, the $171 million pledge is not new money for the environment. Rather, the government is planning to redirect funding from other environmental initiatives.