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

I thank the shadow finance minister for adding to the member for Greenway’s question—an unusual move! The shadow finance minister asked me about the Productivity Commission review of international carbon pricing, and I think this is an important piece of work; I do. Gary Banks spoke about it on behalf of the Productivity Commission, and, as usual, when the opposition comes into this place and quotes documents, they quote selected pieces or indeed just misquote them entirely, because I will refer the shadow finance minister to the conclusion of Mr Banks’s speech. He said these words in conclusion:

While we may not be able to deliver everything that some people expect, I am confident the study can shed light on what other countries are doing, how the various policies work, the uncertainties surrounding the efficacy of many of them, how much they achieve and at what cost.

This is the work that the Productivity Commission has been asked to do to provide a stream of advice about action that is happening in other nations to embrace a clean energy future. This is one of a number of important pieces of work that are informing the government as we deliberate on carbon pricing. Those pieces of work include the reports and updates that people have seen released by Professor Garnaut over the past few weeks. Of course, we will also be informed by Treasury modelling.

The point that the shadow finance minister should draw from that is that there will be abundant information and facts available about the key matters that require judgment in the national leadership. Is climate change real? Well, there were climate change scientists in this parliament today available to members, hosted on a bipartisan basis, to talk about how the science is real, even though the Leader of the Opposition goes around denying it. Then of course we have the economic advice about the efficient means of acting, and the most efficient means of acting is by putting a price on carbon. Then we will have the Productivity Commission work, which will add to other streams of knowledge about how the rest of the world is acting, including China, India and the United States. What this means is that the shadow minister—who is not prepared to act in the national interest but joins the Leader of the Opposition in his fear campaign—would prefer that the economic future of this country had us being left behind the clean energy future of the rest of the world, with all the loss of prosperity that that would provide.

As this parliamentary week draws to a conclusion, I believe members, particularly coalition backbenchers, will leave this place thinking about questions of judgment. They will go back to their electorates and think about the judgment of the Leader of the Opposition as he denies the climate change science. They will think about the judgment of the Leader of the Opposition as he shares a platform with Pauline Hanson, something John Howard would never have done.

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