Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We cannot afford to be left behind, and under the Gillard Labor government we will not be. I have said this before and I will say it again. This is not to say Labor is jumping into some time machine and going full throttle into the future. We are trying to keep up with the times, reflecting the views of those we represent and keeping an eye on the future. Labor is the party for today and for the future. It is setting goals because innovation, development and investment will follow. We will see things years from now which we cannot even begin to imagine today. It will be because of Labor that the unimaginable becomes possible and, because of the untapped talent and resources Australia boasts, these possibilities are endless. Al Gore has said:

… the people who still say that global warming isn't real are actually in the same boat with the flat earth society. They get together and party on Saturday nights with the folks that believe the moon landing was in a movie lot in Arizona.

That is what we have opposite in this place. In the 21st century we have an opposition so outdated and prehistoric it is just like the dinosaurs. The Liberal Party will always be around as a reminder of what the past looks like. They are well-conserved, just like dinosaurs in the Melbourne museum—something you go and look at as a reminder of days past. All 22 million people in this country will be affected in some way by the effects of climate change. However, 88 people are trying to get in the way of taking action—all for one person, all for the goal of getting the Leader of the Opposition into the Lodge. They are a self-interested party with no priorities. The Leader of the Opposition's campaign against carbon pricing is as legitimate, credible and believable as a 20c Rolex—it might tick for a while but pretty quickly it stops working and you see it for the cheap, desperate phony it is.

Let us quickly look at the Liberal Party's plan—their 34-page document of deceit, as it was well called. Let us call it what it is: a big tax grab. The Leader of the Opposition will try and cut pollution by making Australians pay. Australian households will have $1,300 ripped off them per year and that money taken from Australian families will go directly to big polluters. The Liberal Party want to give the hard-earned money of Australian working families to the big polluters. We Australians should not have to surrender both our clean air future and our own hard-earned money to pay the big polluters for their dirty habit. It is a ridiculous plan that they put forward, and they know that it will not achieve anything.

We all know the Leader of the Opposition is good at scaring people. He is like a little child at Halloween, except the mask seems to be permanently fixed. I would like to read out one of the many emails that I have received from locals supporting a price on carbon. It reads:

I am writing to show our support for the Labor government to implement a carbon price and other measures for addressing climate change and transforming our economy away from reliance on fossil fuels. Please do not allow a fear campaign to weaken your resolve—stay firm and lets take Australia into a more sustainable future. I am sick of hearing from people who still think they are living in the 1980s—it's time to embrace the 21st century and build new industries. This is a key initiative I want from the Labor government that I voted for.

This is what it is all about. It is risk management for our future and our children's future. What is the worst case scenario? That we invest in a cleaner future, we lower pollution or at best we mitigate the problems that climate change will bring to our future. I ask this question to those opposite: how could anyone look in their child's eyes and say, 'I'm not prepared to do all I can do to give you a cleaner, pollution-free future.'? It is wrong and it is not what we should be doing here. I support putting a price on pollution because I support our country's future.

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