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

I am a little bit surprised to get this question from the shadow minister who has asked it, given that he was responsible for working with the now Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Penny Wong, to negotiate the bipartisan agreement on pricing carbon that was before this parliament during the last parliamentary term—a man who dedicated hour after hour after hour to working on a scheme to price carbon. We thank him for those efforts. The fact that now he has been asked to come to the dispatch box and ask this question just shows the hypocrisy of the opposition when it comes to pricing carbon, because of course we know that across the opposition there are people who believe, as we do, that climate change is real and that the most efficient way of dealing with climate change is to price carbon. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition used to believe that very, very firmly himself until he decided that it was in his political interest to run the protest campaign that he is running now—all opposition and no leader.

The answer to the shadow minister's question is—and I refer to his wise words before the election—that he knows, as I do, that there are upwards pressures on electricity prices arising from things like underinvestment in distribution.

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