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

To the Leader of the Opposition I say you are being marooned by the tide of history. Your question could not make it clearer. As history has marched past you in this parliament today, there you are, standing on the sidelines, relentless negativity the order of the day. Let me remind the Leader of the Opposition that the plan that has passed this House of Representatives today to put a price on carbon means that we will cut taxes for Australian working people. We will cut taxes for Australians who earn less than $80,000 a year. We will increase the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,200—tripling it. We will make sure that there are a million people who are not in the tax system. We will increase payments for family payments. We will increase pensions; 1.8 million pensioner households will on average come out $210 in front.

And who is the threat to all of this? Who is the threat to the living standards of Australians? Who seeks to impose upon them an additional cost? Who is the threat? It is the Leader of the Opposition with his reckless plan to impose a burden of $1,300 on Australians taxpayers. It is time for the Leader of the Opposition to accept that this House of Representatives today has chosen to put a price on carbon pollution, to make our biggest polluters pay the price of the carbon pollution they generate, to use that money to increase pensions and to cut taxes, to protect Australian jobs and to seize a clean-energy future. And there the Leader of the Opposition sits, marooned with his negativity, wanting to put an extra tax on taxpayers and give that money to the big polluters—too stubborn, too relentlessly negative to even come into this parliament and vote to support steelworkers' jobs, a remarkable choice embracing negativity after days and days of campaigning and trying to instil fear into those very workers.

This House of Representatives has decided today to seize the future. As we go out and grab that future with both hands, there will be the Leader of the Opposition on the sidelines, saying no with no policies to guide him, as always.

See this speech in context