I think you are rewriting history there unless by “No one”, you mean no-one in right wing ALP politics. It has been a big scientific issue for 30 years, though not proven IMO at first. The CSIRO was hosting conferences on it in the mid 80s at least. I first read conference proceedings on it in 1988; at the time the hole in the Ozone layer was the biger threat, but that was taken care of by the Montreal protocol. There were UN conferences since the late 80s. It was a significant Australian political issue in the runup to Kyoto in the mid 90s, and that is over 10 years ago now.

I was a skeptic on it at first but was convinced after the Russian ice cores from Vostok in 1992 – that pretty much proved it. After that it was a debate about how fast it would act and how much damage it woudl do, plus what we would do to respond. I don’t recall much denialism until after IPCC2 and the coal and oil industries realised the solution was a threat to them. They did their dishonest work well, and obviously have mining unions in tow too now.

Rudd now 45% ahead on prefered P.M. (65 – 20)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25232508-601,00.html

Police Minister Judy Spence, Transport Minister John Mickel, Communities Minister Lindy Nelson-Carr and Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech are understood to have missed out on cabinet spots, after talks with the premier today.

Is Bligh trying to give the Left more ministries?

The fact that the theory was about didn’t make it a “front-rank issue”.

No, but it should’ve been.

Yes, it’s too late to stop climate change, and very likely (even with no carbon emissions from tomorrow onwards) that we’ve bought into the 2 degree temperature rise and all its associated effects regardless. However, this is neither cause for despair or for inaction. CC will have benefits as well as problems, but we need to act now to ensure that we capitalise on the former and minimise the later.
The big problem with the cc debate is that we’re ignoring the need to adapt – people seem quite happy to talk about drastic cuts in their lifestyles if they can hold on to the idea that the climate will stabilise. Tell them it’s about drastic changes to their lifestyle AND adaption to a new climate and they go all peculiar.
Not just my experience, one of my friends is a leading climatologist and she reports the same reaction – everyone’s quite happy to talk about mitigation but start talking about the need to adapt and they become hostile.