David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to the opposition's approach to tackling climate change, perhaps they have not talked about climate change today because they do not see it as being an imminent threat. Maybe they see it as being a medium-term or a longer-term threat. In this debate there has been a failure to address some of those longer-term challenges. But the member for Flinders let the cat out of the bag when he was interviewed on 7.30 just a couple of days ago. He was asked whether or not the so-called direct action plan—this is subsidies for polluters—would provide long-term certainty for the investment community. The best he could come up with was to confirm that the policy does not even look beyond the next 10 years. It is a policy that is directed towards a target of 2020. But if you are out there in the investment community and you want to make some of those hard investment decisions about whether to invest in the new technologies of the future—whether to make those 30- to 50-year investments across the lifecycle of an asset—if you want some certainly don't go to the coalition because, by his very admission, the member for Flinders has indicated that his policy does not even look beyond the next 10 years.

So, when it comes to imminent threats, they have failed to address them. We saw the opposition leader's attempt at a budget in reply.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

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