Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Indi for her multipronged question, the first part of which went to grocery prices. We have just had another example of so much of the misinformation campaign we have had to endure over the last several months from the opposition. It is the case that all that has occurred to date in the many meetings of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, following on from the start of those deliberations in October last year, is that agreement has been reached on the broad architecture of the carbon price scheme, the detail of which has now been in the process of negotiation since that announcement by the Prime Minister and the minister for climate change on 24 February this year. It is of course the case that we are yet to announce the carbon price. It is of course the case that we are yet to announce the precise levels of assistance to go to households, although the Prime Minister has made it clear that more than half of the revenue from the carbon price that is going to be raised from polluters is going to go in assistance to low- and middle-income households.

We have not yet announced either the price or the levels of assistance, let alone the details of assistance that is going to also be available to businesses, nor have we announced the details of exactly which industries in what amounts or what level of assistance is going to be available to the energy-intensive trade-exposed sectors. That is why it is not possible for the member for Indi or Ms Carnell, on behalf of her trade association, or anybody else to make the kind of estimate that is included in the question just posed by member for Indi, which asserted there would be a three to five per cent rise in grocery prices. Of course it is the case that the government is modelling the impact of the carbon price on food and groceries. The member for Indi would be aware, having debated in the House the carbon pollution reduction scheme legislation—and indeed the member for Wentworth is also here and he would be only too well aware—that there was very detailed modelling of the likely impact on food and groceries in relation to that scheme.

When the carbon price and its details are announced, which the Prime Minister has indicated is going to be in the middle of the year, then it is going to be possible to make detailed calculations and to make estimates with much greater precisions of the likely impact on food and grocery prices. Until then, it remains simply part of a scare campaign or a campaign of misinformation, which we have had all too much of from the Leader of the Opposition through this year. The other part of the question from the member for Indi went to Australia's contribution to financing arrangements emerging from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I will start with the second part of the member for Indi's question, which went to what is known in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks as fast-start funding. I can confirm that Australia committed, in 2009-10, to contribute $599 million to fast-start funding. The figure that the member for Indi gave in her question was of approximately $470 million having been spent or otherwise committed. I can say, although I cannot say to the nearest million dollars, that that is generally correct. I can indicate to the member for Indi that, to give an example of what the fast-start funding goes to, one part of that funding was committed to and announced by the minister and me at Cancun in December last year at the United Nations framework convention talks: a $30 million contribution that Australia is making to carbon projects in Indonesia—in particular to a project for dewatering of peat in Kalimantan province. It is something that we are very pleased to join with Indonesia and Norway on in a joint project that is going to enable Indonesia, through a range of forestry and other related projects, to contribute to the carbon emission reduction task that the world faces.

The other proposition was to the effect that 10 per cent of the carbon revenue was to be contributed— (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Portfolio

Proposed expenditure, $ 1,669,355,000

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