Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The third point I'll make in response to the Prime Minister's comments is about the coalition's record. The coalition has a proud record of reducing emissions. Indeed, we reduced emissions by over 20 per cent on their 2005 level. When it came to the Kyoto protocol and targets, we smashed them out of the ballpark. We were tracking to also smash our targets for the Paris Agreement. This is the thing—what the coalition believes in, Labor doesn't. That is, you've got to strike the right balance. There's a balance to be struck here. On one side, you need to decarbonise the Australian economy, but, on the other side, you need to grow the Australian economy. Unless you get that balance in tandem, well, you're going to throw it out of whack, and one side loses. With this policy, it's the economy that loses.

The last point is that the Prime Minister and the minister have spoken this afternoon on this policy using the word 'certainty'. Let me ask them this question. Name one business in Australia that now has any certainty about the tax they're going to pay—not one. Do you know why there's no certainty? Despite all the crowing from Labor, they have not modelled the impact on the businesses. So think about that. They do not know the impact of this policy on any one of those businesses. How dare the Labor Party inflict this on the Australian people and the Australian economy. They've never done the economic modelling on this, but they're proud of it. Taxes up—they're proud of it; prices up—they're proud of it; investment down—they're proud of it; and emissions offshored and multiplied—and they're proud of that, too. It's a disgrace. There's a way to decarbonise the Australian economy. You need balance. This lacks balance and therefore it needs to be opposed.

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