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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for giving me this opportunity to speak to the House on a day of amazing inconsistency by the opposition. We have offered to vote for their suspension and to give me the opportunity to address the parliament, and they have said no. What curious people they are. They come into the parliament and move a motion they do not want carried. But that curiosity is nothing compared with the curiosity of their approach today. For days and days and days the Leader of the Opposition has been at a petrol pump saying to Australians that the government’s carbon price will cost them 6½c a litre. He has been in shops sympathising with small business people saying that he knows the government’s carbon price is going to increase their electricity bills by $1,500. He and his spokespeople have said variously that they know for sure that this is going to cost Australian families $1,100, $300 or $400. They were out there actually saying to the Australian people that they knew what it was going to cost the Australian people and they were campaigning against it.

Indeed, so certain was the Leader of the Opposition about this campaign he curiously and inappropriately called for a people’s revolt on it. And then today he comes into the parliament as if all of that has not happened, as if every representation he has made to the Australian people has not occurred. Today he goes on a completely different tack and says, ‘Actually the flaw in the government’s scheme is there is not enough details yet to know what it’s going to cost.’ That is the Leader of the Opposition, out of his own mouth, acknowledging to the Australian people that every representation he has made about the price of petrol, every representation he has made about electricity prices, every representation he has made about cost to families has been made up. His criticism of me today is that there is not enough information in the public domain to know what this is going to cost. Well to the Leader of the Opposition I say: ‘How do you explain the conversation at the petrol pump? How do you explain the conversation in the fruit shop? How do you explain every representation you’ve made on television about the costs to Australian families, except to acknowledge that you made that those figures up?’

The best thing that is going to come out of today is that, whenever someone in the opposition uses a figure again about carbon pricing we will point to this day and we will point to this debate and we will say that that figure is made up because the Leader of the Opposition himself came into the Australian parliament and said there was not enough detail to know what the price was. His fear campaign on dollars and cents ends today because he himself has acknowledged there is not enough information to know what the price is.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: others might be amused or even concerned about his inconsistency—I am not. The only thing consistent about the Leader of the Opposition is his inconsistency. Today, they have gone down this track of pretending that they are genuinely interested in information for the first time. The Leader of the Opposition, having sent out his backbenchers and frontbenchers to say the most inappropriate things today, realised during the morning that he had gone too far. Because he knew he had gone too far—he sent out his frontbenchers to say the most inappropriate things—today, for the first time, he is pretending he is genuinely interested in information. A very interesting thing has happened today. We finally found the Leader of the Opposition’s shame threshold. We have had to dig pretty deep to find it—it was not easy. He could shamelessly go out and give misinformation to the Australian people. He could shamelessly run around name-calling. We finally hit his shame level today when he realised that, by sending out people like the member for Indi to say highly inappropriate things, it was a moment for shame.

That is the reason the Leader of the Opposition today has moved to saying there is not enough information about carbon pricing. Let me explain it all to the Leader of the Opposition. I know that he has had so many positions about carbon pricing it must be quite hard for him to keep it straight in his head. When you wake up one day and say, ‘The science is real,’ when you wake up another day and say, ‘The science is nonsense,’ when you wake up one day and say you want to vote for a carbon pollution reduction scheme, when you wake up another day and say you want to vote against it, when you wake up one day saying that you believe in a carbon tax and it is the simplest way, and when you start running a fear campaign against a carbon tax, it probably is quite complicated when you are engaged in that inconsistency day after day, weather vane act by weather vane act to keep the simple principles in your mind.

But let me remind the Leader of the Opposition about these simple principles and they are really very clear. Climate change is happening. It is caused by human activity. It is caused by carbon pollution. I believe that. I know the Leader of the Opposition generally struggles to believe it, but I believe it. Consequently, if we want the next generation of Australians to be in an economy with clean energy jobs, to be in an economy—

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