Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

The fact of the matter is that the Leader of the Opposition does not have a clue about his own policy. Of course, when the department of climate change had a look at this tree planting proposition, as the Prime Minister was noting before, the 'subsidies for polluters' policy would require trees to be planted in an area five times the size of Tasmania, 23 times the size of the Sydney Basin and roughly the same area that is covered by Germany. That is what the 'subsidies for polluters' policy means. I wonder whether the National Party has worked out that this means planting trees all over prime agricultural land in this country. The fact of the matter is that the opposition's policy is a joke. The only way to deal with this issue is by a market mechanism to do it at cheapest cost. (Time expired)

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