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

a national debate about pricing carbon and ensuring we do the right thing by our environment. I would like to remind people of some moments in that national debate. I have here the Liberal Party climate change policy from 1990. It has got Andrew Peacock on it, as of course it would, as he was the leader at the time. We all know that a souffle does not rise twice, but Mr Peacock did want to do something about rising greenhouse gases. And here we have his policy: a target to reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 20 per cent by the year 2000—a more progressive man in 1990 than the Leader of the Opposition is today. When you look at the election policy, you see that he was arguing for a tax review to promote sound environmental practices in industry and he said that he would never resile from a willingness to act in the genuine national interest wherever that is required.

The history of Liberal engagement with this question goes on. Here is the environment policy from the days of John Hewson and Fightback. As I understand it, the Leader of the Opposition wrote Fightback. Maybe he wrote this as well: ‘a better environment and jobs’—their policy. This says: ‘Where possible, the coalition will look for market solutions to environmental problems. We will use market forces and realistic pricing mechanisms as the primary means of regulation.’ That is something the Liberal Party no longer believes in.

Then, from the 2007 election, we have all of these documents, with Prime Minister Howard and Treasurer Costello committing the Liberal Party to action on climate change and an emissions trading scheme. Those were the days when the Liberal Party bothered to deal with facts. Now they have succumbed to this low point under the Leader of the Opposition, where all they deal in is fear. Does the Leader of the Opposition remember those days? (Time expired)

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