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

To the Leader of the National Party I would say the following: the regulators for electricity prices in major states around the nation have already spoken. They have already spoken about the impact of carbon pricing, and when they have spoken about the impact of carbon pricing they have said that its contribution to increased electricity prices will be the same as the Treasury modelling at 10 per cent, or indeed less than the Treasury modelling. Now the Leader of the National Party shakes his head, but you cannot shake your head and wish away a fact. That is what has been said in New South Wales. That is what has been said in Queensland. In Western Australia the amount was actually less. Let us remember: not only have these determinations by the electricity price regulators backed in the Treasury modelling, but what they mean is that what the government has been saying to Australian families and pensioners about assistance is absolutely right. People will see assistance coming into their family budgets—3.2 million pensioners—and millions of them will be better off. Families on average will see assistance of $10.10 and will experience price changes of less than that.

On the specific example that the Leader of the National Party has raised, I am more than happy to take a look at it, but what I would say is this: my experience in this parliament time after time, day after day, is that things are brought into this parliament by the opposition and represented as if they were true, and on further inquiry they are found out to be completely false and just another part of the fear campaign coming from this Leader of the Opposition. Let's remember where this fear campaign has got itself to. It has got itself to a point where Liberal-National Party members are now anxious about the relentless negativity of the Leader of the Opposition and his overblown, false claims.

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