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

Once again, I say to the member for Herbert that he has got a lot of explaining to do. The Townsville Ring Road was voted against by the member for Herbert. On the question of carbon pricing, I would advise the local mayor to get the facts about carbon pricing that are available to local councils. Because as well as voting against infrastructure in his electorate the member for Herbert is engaged in the Leader of the Opposition's fear campaign, he would of course have avoided any of the facts. The facts are these: the impact on the cost of living has been modelled by Treasury at 0.7 per cent, people will receive in their hands additional money—pension payments, family payments, tax cuts—and any impact on local councils has been factored into those figures. The member for Herbert should get those facts to his local council.

When the member for Herbert is thinking about the impact on his community of the needs of our future economy, which includes a clean energy future in which we are sharing the proceeds of the resources boom, he might also like to talk to the local mayor about how to get to a clean energy future in the cheapest possible way—that is, with the government's plan, not the Leader of the Opposition's plan—and he might want to talk to the local mayor about how good it would be for local economic activity if businesses large and small got a tax cut. That is our plan, and the member for Herbert is opposed to it, alongside the Leader of the Opposition. He might also ask the local mayor how he would feel about the ratepayers—working people, people with families, pensioners—receiving extra money, because under our government they will and the Leader of the Opposition wants to rip that money out of their hands.

Townsville is a regional city which has an economy that is going well, and that is fantastic. But economic growth brings pressures for infrastructure and, through the minerals resource rent tax, we are in a position to fund vital infrastructure that the member for Herbert is opposed to, even though the people who live in his constituency will be using it.

See this speech in context