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

To the Leader of the Opposition I say: there is a little edge of desperation about all of this, isn't there? The Leader of the Opposition has been caught out misleading the Australian community. He has been here in Parliament House and right around the nation claiming to anyone who will listen that carbon pricing will apply to petrol at petrol bowsers—that families or small businesses going to fill up the tank will be paying a carbon price on the petrol they put in their motor vehicles. He said it here in parliament and he said it around the nation.

The decent thing for the Leader of the Opposition to do today would be to ackn­owledge that he was wrong, to acknowledge that he went out of his way, with no facts and no truthfulness, to try to scare the Australian people. I understand that the Leader of the Opposition, having been caught out once, is unlikely to do the decent thing. Instead, he will be trying to move his scare campaign to the next stage. I anticipate that over the coming weeks we will hear more and more ridiculous scares from the Leader of the Opposition. I say to Australians who hear these words of fear from the Leader of the Opposition: he was dead wrong about petrol, and every word he says over the next few weeks, with his next round of scare campaigns, will be dead wrong as well. Petrol is not in the carbon-pricing scheme. It will not have a carbon price applied to it now or in the future.

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