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

No. Our plan backs in what Australians are doing. We have met and beaten our Kyoto targets. They weren't legislated. We are going to meet and beat our Paris targets that we set at 26 to 28 per cent. We had this discussion at the last election. Those opposite said they didn't believe that our plans would meet that target. They said, 'It won't happen'. Other commentators said it wouldn't happen. They said the same thing about our 2020 targets. They made all the same criticisms and all the same noise that they're making today about our plans for 2050.

But, guess what? We met 2020. There aren't that many countries that can say that, because they just didn't meet it. We beat it by almost a full year of emissions by Australia. We beat that target in 2020. Regarding 2030, when we go to Glasgow we will be able to say that our projections, which are included in our nationally determined contribution, will see emissions reduced, we expect, by 35 per cent by 2030. Australians know what our policies are, they know what they're designed to achieve, they know what they have met, they know how those targets have been beaten and they know how we plan to get there—with technologies which we know will secure the outcomes that we are seeking to achieve. Australians, of course, want us to achieve net zero by 2050, but they don't want a blank cheque, they don't want to be signed up to a blank cheque, which is what the Labor party want to do with their legislation. Australians don't want the mandates to come down and be told what to do on their farm, in their business, in their home or in their car. They want to be trusted.

We trust Australians to be able to go forward and do these things, just like we trusted them to go out and get vaccinated. The Leader of the Opposition thought they had to be bribed to do that. We believe in the integrity of Australians and their commitment to do what's right by Australia. We don't think they need to be mandated. We don't think they need those sorts of things, because we know they want to achieve it and we know that's true, because we've already seen emissions fall by over 20 per cent on 2005 levels, and at the same time our economy has grown by 45 per cent. We've got a million people back in jobs in manufacturing in this country. Under Labor, one in eight jobs in manufacturing—gone. On electricity prices, under our government, on the latest inflation figures, they've gone up by three per cent since we were elected. Under Labor, they went up by 101 per cent.

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