Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I would refer him to the speech I gave to the United Nations recently, the National Statement for Australia, which set out very clearly the actions that Australia is taking and our record, in particular, in relation to renewable energy investments, which per capita are the highest of any country in the world today. I note the member for Melbourne shakes his head. I simply said that Australia's per capita investment in renewable energy is the highest in the world today, and he shook his head. If he's in denial of those facts, I'll leave that to him. What I know is what I set out in that national statement to the United Nations, which said very clearly that we will meet our Kyoto 2020 targets. Not only will we meet them, but we will beat them by 367 million tonnes. Not only that, but we will meet our 2030 commitments through the combination of measures that we've announced and the other factors that will contribute to that out to 2030.

We agree that there is a need to take action on climate change. That was not an issue of debate or division, I believe, between the major parties at the last election. The issue that was debated, the issue that was being contested, was the scale and the level of targets that could be responsibly set for Australia in the future and the impact that that would have on the Australian economy. At the election we were able to explain very clearly what the costs of our targets were and how we were going to meet them. The Labor Party at the last election were unable to do that and they were unable to spell out what the costs would be to jobs, and this was a key issue.

I note now that the Labor Party, since the election, cannot even settle on a policy on climate change. They cannot settle on what their policy is. We've got 28 per cent over here. We've got 45 per cent over there. We've got—

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