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

I thank the member for Robertson for her question and her deep interest in representing her constituents in this parliament while also ensuring that her constituents can live in a nation where opportunity is shared and where we show appropriate care and concern for each other so we are not leaving people, industries or regions behind.

We live in a world of remarkable change. Our planet, our world, is changing with economic weight moving to our region of the world. This is great news for our country. The tyranny of distance that has held Australia back in many ways in past ages will be there no more. We are in the right place at the right time in history in the growing region of the world. We come to this change economically strong as a result of having ensured that our economy kept generating jobs and protecting jobs during the days of the global financial crisis. By acting we kept Australians in work, and there is nothing more important to Australian families than having a job.

In this phase of our economic transformation it is very important that we continue to reform and we continue to face up to the hard challenges that are necessary to ensure our continued prosperity. They include making sure that we are reforming our education system, because the skills and capacities of the Australian people are ultimately our best comparative advantage in the world. It is about making sure we invest in infrastructure including the infrastructure of the future, the National Broadband Network. It is about making sure that we are providing the services that Australians rely on in the most efficient way. Our health reform agreement is a major step forward in doing that. We are working through profound reform agendas as our society ages and we need to care for more older Australians and also in the area of disability to make sure that we are not leaving Australians behind because they have faced a life circumstance where they or a member of their family has a disability.

These are all major challenges, but we are also facing up to the big challenge of climate change and to making sure that in the future economic growth and emissions growth are not one and the same, that we can decouple economic growth from growth in carbon pollution. This week we introduced to the parliament our plan to reduce carbon pollution and to create the clean energy jobs of the future. It is a plan where polluters pay and Australian families will receive tax cuts and increased family payments, and where pensioners will see increased payments. It is a plan to make sure that our nation innovates and that we see clean energy jobs in this country. It is a plan to ensure that we reach the national goals we have set ourselves, including the unconditional five per cent reduction in emissions.

I note that today the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, composed of miners and manufacturers, has provided a costing of the Leader of the Opposition's plan and confirmed that it will cost Australian families $1,300 a year. That is a cost that Australians should not need to bear.

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