Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister speaks the truth. Putting a price on carbon is what we want to do. We want to make the polluters pay. That is our plan. Those opposite want to call it a tax and that is their problem. It is really a fine on polluters who are doing the wrong thing. They will change their ways. Those on the other side shamefully continue to misrepresent it. Let us try to get some facts on board.

Those on the other side talk about adversity, but I talk about the power of the Australian economy in a global context. We in the Labor Party deal with the facts, and the fact about international action in a global economy is that there are 89 countries accounting for over 80 per cent of global emissions and over 90 per cent of the global economy that have pledged to reduce or limit their carbon pollution by 2020. We cannot sit outside the global economy. We do have the capacity to control our economy and respond, and that is what Labor is committed to doing. Scores of countries have already started the transformation to a low-pollution economy. Thirty-two countries and a number of US states already have emissions trading schemes. We need to act. We need to deal with the economy in a global context.

In my seat of Robertson the economy is probably most experienced at the household level. Let us talk about the household economy. Those opposite would have the households in the seat of Robertson paying $1,300. It was bad enough when it was $720 per household, but now they have said they are not going to deal with this as an international problem—they do not want to have anything to do with foreigners, they will keep it all contained in Australia. The cost is now $1,300 per family in the seat of Robertson. I know that people where I live cannot afford that. In contrast, we have our position on the household economy. The reality is that nine out of 10 households are going to receive assistance from a package that we have carefully organised to support them through this massive shift in the Australian economy, this important structural reform.

The tax cuts that families will receive, the increase in family payments and the increase to pensioners, will be permanent, ongoing and linked to the CPI. That busts one of the other myths that we keep hearing from those on the opposite side. They ignore household economies. They want to cause fear and alarm. They want to tell people they are going to get one payment and they are never going to get another payment. That perception is wrong. Information of that kind going to the community is deliberately misleading. Apart from household economies, let us talk about the part of the economy that the Labor Party is always most interested in: the economy of jobs. We believe in jobs. It was the guiding principle that made us take the action that we did when the global financial crisis hit. We know that if families do not have work, children do not have opportunities and families get impacted in the most extreme ways: they can break down and they can have so many issues that arise because of the anxiety of financial hardship when people lose their jobs.

So where do we put our money? We have a great story to tell. In all of those schools that I go to in my electorate I see—and I know many of those opposite go out to their schools and see it—the celebration of an investment in education. They also know of all of the people in construction in their area who went and got jobs at those schools: the people who drove the trucks, the people who put up the steel, the people who laid pipes and the people who fixed the roofs. All of those people who live in our local economy got the benefit of our stimulus package because we believe in jobs.

Because we believe in jobs we are going to make sure that we make the transition to a clean energy future. With that, by 2020 we are talking about not just a couple of hundred jobs, not just a thousand jobs, but 1.6 million jobs spread right across the country and detailed in the analyses that the Treasurer put forward yesterday. But, wait, there's more. What other elements of the economy are we dealing with, and certainly not in an adverse way? Let us talk about small business. Those opposite like to think they are the only ones who understand anything about small business. How wrong could they be.

Small business is very widespread on the Central Coast. There are 20,000-plus small businesses in my region alone. They need to have money moving around in the economy. We made sure when we had the response to the global financial crisis that we supported families to keep on working and be able to continue to move that money through their local economy. Right now, we have small businesses that are going to benefit as we make sure that the 0.7 per cent impact in the economy is going to be balanced out in our local households by permanent and ongoing assistance.

Families, if they are smart, might make a few adjustments with products that are slightly less in terms of their carbon price loading, and they will be able to salt away some of those benefits. We also have lots of families in my area that are going to get part of the extra buffer that will help them manage this change in the economy. That money will go into local small businesses in the seat of Robertson. This is not an impost on small business; this is a careful, managed integration with small business that we know is vital to our area. On the macro scale, there is so much more to say. Investment is one of the areas that we can see clearly is happening because we are moving to a clean energy future.

In closing, I want to put on the record that we on this side have a clear contrast between those on the opposite side. On their side, polluters get paid to continue to pollute. On our side, polluters pay for their pollution. On their side, the government picks the winners. On our side, the market picks the winners. We will achieve targets; they will not achieve targets. We need to get on with the job of managing the economy, and we will not be doing anything adverse to the Australian people. (Time expired)

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