Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Introducing an emissions trading scheme is all about creating the jobs of the future, all about investment in renewable energy and the jobs that come with it. It is all about jobs—because, if we do not deal with carbon emissions, we will reduce jobs in our communities. We will smash our future prosperity if we do not put in place the right price signals in our economy. So having an emissions trading scheme is all about job creation and facing up to the challenge of carbon emissions so we do not pass on to our children and our grandchildren an unsustainable debt and an unsustainable burden. This is all about jobs for the future. And where could they be? I will just quote some modelling from the Climate Institute on renewable energy: in New South Wales, up to 7,000 new power sector jobs; in Queensland, close to 6,300 new power sector jobs; in Victoria, 6,800 new power sector jobs; and so on.

What we are doing here is making our economy more efficient, and we do it by charging the polluters and by assisting households and industry. We are driving investment into renewable energy and into more and better technologies. They all create the jobs of the future. But those opposite do not understand this, because when it comes to climate change the Leader of the Opposition is a flat-earther. He is a climate change sceptic—

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