Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I always enjoy the interjections from the PhD from Flinders, who, we read out yesterday, was a strong supporter of an emissions trading scheme all his life. But here goes, to the absolute core of it. Firstly, on taxpayers, we in our scheme cost taxpayers $3.3 billion; they cost them $10 billion-plus, three times as much, at their own admission. Secondly, our scheme refers to, as the Leader of the Opposition confirms in his own interview, the ‘value’ of the carbon market. It is like the value of the electricity market or the value of the gas market. What he has sought to do is to say that that equals a tax on consumers.

Last night’s interview was spectacular in the Leader of the Opposition being nailed on the core con which lies at the heart of his climate con job strategy, and that is that on tax you charge three times more. On the question of the size of the market which is created for carbon through the CPRS, that is comparing apples with oranges and you know it, and you were exposed on television last night for having done so.

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