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

What the Leader of the Opposition's supplementary question shows is if you are going to run a fear campaign month after month after month it pays to spend just a tiny moment of your time getting to grips with the policy proposition you are running the fear campaign against. Clearly, the Leader of the Opposition has never done that. He grabbed a slogan out of the air—carbon tax going up and up and up; no more Whyalla; no more lamb roasts; and on and on it went—and he has never got to grips with the policy proposition. To the Leader of the Opposition, who has simply got no idea about this matter: let me explain it to him again.

We put in place carbon pricing. It has a fixed price for the first three years and then you move to an emissions trading scheme which we have worked to link internationally so businesses get the benefit of the world price. Then, of course, what happens with the budget is what happens with other budget figures, and that is that experts in Treasury make forecasts for the government—and the shadow Treasurer rolls his eyes! You are sacking everybody in Treasury, are you? Every professional gone if the shadow Treasurer is ever the Treasurer? Well, of course not. The same professionals will assist the Leader of the Opposition if he is ever Prime Minister and they will give him the same advice, and that advice will be that carbon pricing is the cheapest, most effective way of tackling climate change.

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