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

He has given up! Well done, Greg. I say to the member for Flinders that the Leader of the Opposition has given up, and that is the point. I commend the member for Flinders for at least sticking to his consistent position on accepting the science of climate change. This contrasts with the view of the leader he now serves. The Leader of the Opposition now says: ‘The science is not entirely settled; there is still considerable room to question on this.’ And elsewhere he has said that he is ‘entirely underwhelmed’ by the science. More compellingly, in his own vernacular, he says that it is ‘absolute crap’. We have a Leader of the Opposition, the alternative Prime Minister of Australia who says that climate change is absolute crap and a shadow minister for the environment who says that the evidence is strong and compelling. Is it any wonder that the parliament of the nation is confused on this question?

14:36:58 I said there were five principles. Science is one. The second is the cost mechanism. Our approach is simple: we use a market based approach, and that is because we believe that the cost should be borne by the major polluters. Their approach is that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer. Therefore, the difference between the two approaches is simple: theirs is three times more expensive than ours, at least, and it is a $10 billion-plus charge and impost on the taxpayer. On the question of cost, it speaks for itself.

Then we go to the question of effectiveness, the third criteria for examining how you are going to deal with this challenge of climate change. Here again we had some interesting developments overnight in the assessment made of the environmental effectiveness of the plan put forward by the Leader of the Opposition the other day. The net result of the plan put forward by the Leader of the Opposition is not to decrease Australia’s carbon pollution but to increase it by 13 per cent. Those opposite, through any independent and external analysis of what they have put forward, would know it does not come within a bull’s roar of the 138 megatonnes necessary to bring in a five per cent reduction on Australia’s overall emissions target. In fact, the conclusion of the Department of Climate Change, looking at it generously, is it would generate 40 million tonnes. That is the third factor. No. 1: they reject the science. No. 2: we accept the science.

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