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

and no amount of squealing by the opposition frontbench changes that fact. The Leader of the Opposition today and on other occasions has referred to the Australian scheme as an economy-wide carbon price. He is obviously trying to create the false impression in the minds of people that small businesses are paying this price or households are paying this price, whereas the price is paid directly by less than 500 businesses. Indeed, if you take an economy-wide look in Australia, Australia will have around 60 per cent of its emissions covered where other nations, including Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden, have broader schemes which cover 70 per cent or more of their emissions.

On the synthetic greenhouse gases that the Leader of the National Party raises with me, and these include some gases that are used as refrigerants, the issue here is an import levy for these gases which was first introduced by the Howard government in 2003. Let me repeat that in case anybody has missed it: these levies began under the Howard government. When they began under the Howard government, Dr Kemp, the then Minister for the Environment and Heritage—many of us remember Dr Kemp from his days in the parliament—said this:

As a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Australia is required to adopt policies and measures to mitigate climate change. The amendments introduced by this bill will deliver on this government's—

that is, the Howard government's—

commitment to manage synthetic greenhouse gases—

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