Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

And now we have heard everything in this parliament—a lecture on courage from a man who tweeted and asked people to tell him what he should think on climate change! He is the man for whom the expression ‘no ticker’ was actually generated. He is a man who is hollow, without courage, and does not know what to believe in. He tried to get the leadership of the Liberal Party on the basis that he would say: ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t think anything, I don’t believe in anything. Everybody on the backbench can have a conscience vote.’ He is a man without courage and a man without integrity, because he has said in the past that he stands for a price on carbon and now he is walking away from it.

There are some days in question time where there is one moment that symbolises and comes to be the fulcrum on which a debate changes, and we have had that moment today. I have been saying to the Australian people that this is a desperate fear campaign built on a foundation of lies from the opposition—and we have had that proved today in just one moment. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition came into the parliament today and put to me the following question:

I refer the Prime Minister to her unequivocal statement on Sunday … that:

Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households …

What she did in formulating that question was to cut the sentence in half. What I said was that every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households, to helping businesses transition and to programs to tackle climate change. This was one moment that symbolises a campaign of dishonesty—bringing in a transcript and deliberately cutting it in half to give a false and dishonest impression to the Australian people. That one moment symbolises what this opposition is about: a campaign of dishonesty.

The Leader of the Opposition has been out saying to the Australian people, ‘You’ll pay this dollar figure more, or that dollar figure more for the things that you buy.’ Well, let us just go to a statement from Woolworths—and they’d know a bit about pricing, wouldn’t they! They have said very clearly that they could not forecast the potential price impacts until more details of the scheme were released. Every time the Leader of the Opposition has used a dollar figure, every time he has stood in a shop, every time he has stood next to a car and put petrol in it he has been misleading the Australian people—a campaign of dishonesty, a campaign of fear, a foundation of lies from the Leader of the Opposition.

Let us continue going through the dishonesty, the foundation of lies, that the Liberal Party now relies on. Let us look at the track record of the Leader of the Opposition in dealing with the question of pricing carbon. This will tell you how contentless he is, how he will say anything, how he will do anything on the question of climate change. He has said the following in relation to the Rudd government:

The Rudd government has a mandate to deal with climate change.

He was in this parliament today denying a mandate. He said about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme:

If the government substantially accepts our amendments then there is no reason why this legislation cannot be passed.

He said that in the past. He has said in the past:

I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax.

They are statements made by the Leader of the Opposition, and when the government moves to price carbon, despite him having made those statements, despite him having supported pricing carbon, despite him in fact having directly supported a carbon tax as the best system, he decides that his political interest lies in generating fear. It is a campaign built on dishonesty and a foundation of lies. Should it be a surprise to the Australian community that this man, when faced with choosing between the nation’s interest and his own political interest, would say every time, ‘My own political interest comes first’? He believes in profiting at the nation’s expense. He believes that if he can profit from the nation going to economic ruin, if he can prosper from the economy going downhill, then he will do so.

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