James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity but no, thank you. I see that this is all part of having an efficient system of administration with no duplication. The overall scheme of the Rudd Labor government is to invest in insulation, create thousands of green jobs and bring in a trading scheme—to at least make a decision to start and get the system on the boards so that we can work with it. There has been extensive and wide consultation, and I have to commend Senator Penny Wong for an excellent, thorough and exhaustive job in preparing this. She has covered every single base, she has given wide opportunity to many groups to come on board and she has given full consultation so that no-one can say that they have not had their say. This is going to be the most important economic decision this country will make for decades to come—bigger than the GST, bigger than any other tax reform. This is so big that it will create millions and billions of dollars of money flowing through the economy. How we manage this, how we legislate for this and how we handle accountability is very important. In that respect the role of an independent national auditor to look into it is absolutely vital.

In conclusion, I commend this bill to the House. These amendments are required to correct references to Western Australian legislation which will enable key elements of the national gas access regime to apply to parts of the Commonwealth’s offshore area. It is comforting to see Minister for Resources and Energy sitting beside me, because I know he is passionate about having an energy efficient country which is going to lead the world in all our new technologies and in creating thousands of green jobs—and I know this minister is passionate about jobs. The opposition do not realise that it is all about j-o-b-s—jobs, jobs, jobs—green jobs. I commend the bill to the House.

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