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

I thank the Leader of the National Party for his question. I do think that it leads people to question whether or not the opposition are still committed to reducing carbon pollution by five per cent by 2020, because the Leader of the National Party seemed to be implying in his question that, given Australia's size and scale, somehow we should not be acting. If that is what the Leader of the National Party is saying that is another position from the opposition. My understanding is that they started this morning supporting the minus five per cent target for 2020. If they have moved from that then that should be made expressly clear to the Australian people.

Assuming that they do still support a minus five per cent target, the question for our nation is: if we are going to reach that target, how should we do it and when should we start? Our answers are we should do it soon and we should do it in the cheapest way possible. We should do it by asking the biggest polluters to pay. We should do it by using that money to support Australian working families through tax cuts, many of them seeing tax cuts in the order of $300 a year, and pension increases, with many pensioners seeing that they will have more money in their pockets because the average impact on them of the flowthrough from carbon pricing is less than the amount that they will receive as an increased pension. We will do it by putting more money into the pockets of families through the family payments system. We will do it while supporting Australian jobs and we will be working with industries, like the steel industry and manufacturing, to support Australian jobs. All of these measures to support Australian jobs are opposed by the opposition.

I say to the Leader of the National Party, he needs to ensure that he is informed about action around the world in the form of carbon pricing. This action is being taken in the European Union and in New Zealand. This action will be trialled in provinces in China. This action is happening in states in the United States, including the economy of California, which would be in the G20 if it were a nation on its own account. We are seeing places like India putting a tax on coal in order to fund clean energy development. This is what is happening around the world as people are moving to reduce carbon pollution.

This has presented to our nation the question of how best to do it, and we have answered the question: getting the big polluters to pay and supporting working families. The Leader of the National Party either supports doing nothing—and that seems to be the implication of his question—or he supports the current stated policy of the opposition to rip money out of the hands of working families and give it to be biggest polluters. That is not right, it will not work and working families should not have to pay the $1,300 per year price tag that this Leader of the Opposition and this Leader of the National Party want to put on them.

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