Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Brisbane for his question. The climate science is very clear and so is the economics, and the fact of the matter is that an emissions trading scheme is the least costly, most economically efficient way of reducing carbon pollution. That conclusion, of course, is based on extensive research and analysis. There have been major reports, such as the UK’s Stern review, considered internationally. Within Australia, the government of course has had regard to all of the advice available to it, from Treasury to the Department of Climate Change and the work done by Professor Garnaut—reflected, of course, in the government’s green and white papers.

As the Prime Minister indicated earlier, the previous Prime Minister, John Howard, embraced an emissions trading scheme and took it to the last election on the basis of his own extensive report, the Shergold review. The fact of the matter is that the new Leader of the Opposition not only repudiates the science but has abandoned all pretence of sound economics as well. His policy is all dishonest posturing, a pretence and a con job. There was some mention made a couple of moments ago about Mr Danny Price from Frontier Economics. The interesting thing, of course, is that at his press conference releasing this policy the Leader of the Opposition asserted that Frontier supported the policy and said that Frontier thought it was economically and environmentally responsible. But, going through Mr Price’s comments on 2GB, he said, ‘Our reputation is extremely important to us,’ and then went on to say, ‘We’ve never said anything about whether that is more cost effective’—referring to the Liberal Party policy—‘than the CPRS, so it has been a very limited review in this case.’ I would not call that a sound endorsement of the policy.

But, worse than that, the Leader of the Opposition has now aligned himself with Margaret Thatcher’s former offsider, Lord Monckton, who we know, of course, to be the champion of climate change sceptics. This is a man who the Leader of the Opposition met last night and who said that the international climate change negotiations are ‘about to impose a communist government on the world’.

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