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

To the Leader of the Opposition, no, of course I am not suggesting that—how absurd. The proprietors of those businesses will always know more about those businesses than anybody else. I do say this to the Leader of the Opposition: I do believe that it is appropriate and proper to get full and accurate information to businesses about government policies and plans. He might feel that that is inappropriate. He might feel that it is not right for people to get to the truth. He might feel that people should be denied that information. He might prefer it if people never heard the facts.

I do not share that with him. I think this business deserves the respect of getting all of the information and all of the facts. I have just made a very open offer to the member in good faith and very genuinely to do that. He has used a figure about increases in power costs which simply seems to me to imply that there are some misapprehensions in that business about the imposition of carbon pricing and the way it will work in our economy. I am very happy to work with the member on that.

To the Leader of the Opposition I would say after this discussion that we had in the lead up to yesterday's vote, after this debate of over more than 10 years now, the vote yesterday was about this nation's future. It was about jobs, prosperity and clean energy. I know the Leader of the Opposition thinks that it was about politics and personal pointscoring. It was about something far more important than that. What I never hear from the Leader of the Opposition is him engaging with this national debate. He is there with a policy that everyone knows will not work. He is there with a policy that will take money out of the purses and wallets of families—

Mr Pyne interjecting—

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