Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

there is no doubt now that we will achieve our 2020 targets. That is now a done deal. We will achieve our minus five per cent, or the equivalent of minus 13 per cent from 2005 to 2020, and we will do it without higher electricity prices, without a tax on small businesses and without a tax on families. That is now an accepted fact. We have already seen that the conservative figures we put out then did not include the Emissions Reduction Fund auction—an auction that was more than five times as successful as the estimates of the firm they cited with great gusto yesterday. We achieved more than five times what was the best possible estimate of their favoured modeller.

So our emissions are lower. We have had the lowest emissions since 2004, in trend and seasonal terms. We achieved five times the emissions reduction that was predicted by their favoured modeller, at a fraction of the cost, and we are doing this without an electricity tax. So as we go forward, we will achieve 2020 emissions, we will achieve 2030 emissions targets. There is a choice in this country: two roads. One is a path of higher emissions with higher electricity prices. The other one is lower emissions with lower electricity prices. We make no apologies for the fact that when we said we would reduce the cost of living we did, and that means there can be more jobs and we allow Australia to be more productive. We are achieving our targets. We are doing it and, as we said only a few weeks ago, we will do it on time, on budget and without increasing electricity prices.

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