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

I thank the member for his question. To the member's question I would remind him of the facts, and no amount of fear campaigning from the opposition changes the facts, as inconvenient as they are for the opposition. So, they will shout, they will go and pull stunts and they will come in and ask questions where they have the facts wrong, but nothing changes the facts. The facts are, of course, as I have just said to the member over here, that it is only big businesses that generate a lot of carbon pollution that pay the carbon price. That is the design of the scheme. Had Prime Minister Howard been re-elected in 2007, that would have been the design of his scheme, and the Leader of the Opposition would have been travelling the length and breadth of the country to advocate for it.

With a scheme designed that way, yes, there is some flowthrough impact; we always understood that. We said to small businesses, who do not have to fill in any additional forms—unlike the crushing burden of paperwork that fell on top of them when the GST was implemented by the former Howard government—that they should pass those costs through. And let us remind ourselves of the magnitude—in terms of the cost of living, 0.7 per cent, less than a cent in a dollar. In order to help Australian families with that we have provided tax cuts.

The member would represent people in this parliament earning less than $80,000—indeed, he would represent thousands of them—who have a tax cut. He would represent some working women who have gone from paying tax to paying no tax. He would represent some pensioners who have seen a historic pension increase and now, on top of it, 20 per cent more assistance than they need to deal with the average impact of carbon pricing.

Mr Robb interjecting—

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