Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister agree with modelling by the CSIRO and the Climate Institute released today that concludes a carbon price beginning at $15 increasing to $100 per tonne will increase petrol prices initially by 10 per cent and eventually by up to 51 per cent? Will the Prime Minister rule out a new petrol tax of 10c, 20c or 30c a litre as a result of his emissions trading scheme?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first thing I would say is that the member for Wentworth committed the then government in July last year to the inclusion of the transport sector within the emissions trading scheme. That is the first point. As the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources in the Howard government he said that the transport sector should be included in the emissions trading scheme. That is point one. Is that still the position of those opposite? Is it? I take it by the particularly embarrassed silence of the member for Wentworth that there is a bit of ambiguity about this these days.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the interjectors say, it takes a little more than that to embarrass the member for Wentworth. On the question of emissions trading, we on this side of the House know a simple fact and it is this: the economic cost of inaction on climate change is far greater than the economic cost of action on climate change. We, the government of Australia, are committed to acting responsibly on this matter into the long term; those opposite fiddled for 12 years and said that they had to act on this, to act responsibly, to move themselves into the appropriate international negotiations and to advance the domestic debate on the question of an emissions trading scheme. It was only at five minutes to midnight when their market research demonstrated that they had a problem with their score that we had this flurry of activity. We suddenly had a commitment to do something on an emissions trading scheme. They committed to that. Secondly, as a government they committed to the inclusion of the transport sector.

Thirdly, the party of flip, flop, flap do not know where they stand on the emissions trading scheme. We have a clear-cut course of action which is as follows: having assumed government only six months ago—those opposite had 12 years to act—we have indicated that we will be developing a government green paper in response to the initial report delivered by Professor Garnaut. Towards the end of the year we will deliver a white paper in response to that. But I say to those opposite: they have now signalled quite plainly that they are committed to running a scare campaign on climate change. They have committed to running a scare campaign on the emissions trading scheme. They have committed to running a scare campaign because they do not have policies for the future.