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

To the member who asked the question, we have just seen the Treasurer deal with the so-called facts from a question yesterday and, clearly, what the opposition said then was wrong so, of course, I will check what the member is putting today. But I would say to him generally, he would be well aware of what I have said in this place about small businesses over a long period of time now and the expectation we have that small businesses, including people who sell fish, are in a position to pass through costs because we have put more money in the hands of consumers.

When Prime Minister Howard was in office, he acknowledged all of these impacts of a carbon price and said it was still important that we had a carbon price in our nation so that we could reduce carbon pollution, tackle climate change and get onto using cleaner energy sources. The members of the front bench who were here in 2007 stood on that platform of supporting carbon pricing. Ever since, we have seen fear raised in the community and I am not surprised that a local business person in the member's electorate may be reflecting some of that irresponsible fear campaign because people have had to deal with a lot of nonsense over the time period since we announced our intention to price carbon. When you stand back and look at the facts of what has happened since we priced carbon, for some reason today the opposition is saying—first time ever—that it is interested in facts. Well, if it was interested in facts it would know Whyalla has not been wiped off the map, we continue to mine coal and we have seen the modest cost-of-living impacts we predicted. We have seen—

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