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

No amount of hysterical laughter changes the facts, as I have explained yesterday and today. I know that the opposition, in order to keep its fear campaign going, needs to keep twisting things, but these are the facts—and I assume that the member who asked me the question is genuinely interested in the facts. The modelling assumes two things. It assumes that nations match the lower end of their commitments. For Australia that is minus five per cent. That is what the modelling assumes. I am sure the member has been talking about this within the Liberal Party. There has been a campaign to try to distort this publicly, to keep providing grist to the mill of the fear campaign of the opposition, but those are the facts of the modelling, and no amount of shouting or asking or re-asking the same question, day after day after day, will change those facts.

I would also say to the member who asked the question: once again, just like the question from the Leader of the Nationals, there is starting to be an implication in these questions that Australia should do nothing. If there has been a change in the position of the opposition—we know that some days the Leader of the Opposition backs in the miners' five per cent target; we know that some days he goes out to public meetings of Australians and describes it as crazy—then I think we should hear about that change.

I would also say to the member who asked the question that, as a long-serving member in this place, he may want to reflect on the fact that every living Liberal leader, including the Leader of the Opposition, has supported a price on carbon. He may want to have that conversation with the Leader of the Opposition, who is on the record as supporting a price on carbon, as is every one of his living predecessors. It is a longstanding Liberal Party position, backed by the Leader of the Opposition himself.

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