Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

He knows that we have a strong track record: we met and beat our Kyoto targets by 459 million tonnes—almost a year's worth of emissions. And we're on track to meet and beat our 2030 targets by up to a 35 per cent reduction; we're already down by 20.8 per cent.

The plan we've laid out today is a practical, responsible path forward that respects Australians and respects the Australian way. It preserves and supports jobs in traditional industries but also captures new opportunities as they emerge and as customer demands change. It continues to build on the policies and initiatives that have worked.

There are five core principles behind the plan: technology, not taxes. The plan respects Australian's choices. It respects the fact that Australians have been choosing to put solar on their roofs: one in four Australians. They're not being told by the government; they're doing it because it's their choice. It respects the enormous importance of affordable, reliable energy for our regions and for Australia more generally. It supports our export industries and the strength that they provide to this great nation—and will provide for many, many years to come. And it doesn't impose costs on Australians; that's through a portfolio of technologies coming down to parity—to cost competitiveness—with the higher-emitting alternatives. There's ultra low-cost solar, which we have just introduced in the low-emissions technology statement—we're targeting $15 a megawatt-hour. There's clean aluminium at under $2 per kilogram and getting the cost of measuring soil carbon—that great 90 million-hectare carbon sink—in Australian agriculture down, to a metre, to $3 per hectare per year.

But there's an alternative. We've laid out our plan for 2030 and for 2050. Those opposite haven't. They have no target for 2030, no plan for 2030 and no plan for 2050. The only thing they have, all they seem to have up their sleeve, is a law telling Australians what to do. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition called a technology led approach 'absurd'. But we know what they really want to do; they want to impose taxes, because that's the only tool in their toolkit.

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