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

My position on this is no different to that of John Winston Howard, who said exactly the same. That is, if you impose a price on carbon what happens is it actually has an effect on prices in the economy. The question therefore is: how do you actually compensate? We in our scheme provide compensation directly through for consumers who have any pass-through price effect and, secondly, for businesses themselves we have a $1.97 billion Climate Change Adjustment Program fund, $200 million of which is available for small businesses. That is our policy. It is very clear, because we are putting a cap on carbon, we are charging the big polluters and we are also providing compensation for families. With your policy there is no cap on carbon, you are not charging the polluters and you are putting one huge slug on the taxpayers for a completely unfunded policy.

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