Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the government prepared to export jobs from our energy intensive communities by introducing an emissions trading scheme ahead of our trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region?

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

I am surprised that the Leader of the National Party when he was a minister in the previous cabinet did not put that question to the minister for the environment who then (a) supported the introduction of an emissions trading scheme and (b) said that the transport sector should be included. What policy are we now debating against those opposite—the one last year or the one this year? This government intends to proceed responsibly to ensure that we maintain Australia’s global economic competitiveness to ensure that Australian working families and individuals are supported through any transition which occurs in the economy. They were our principles in the past and will continue to be our principles in the future—unlike those opposite. I say to each one of them as they embark now on day one of their orchestrated fear campaign on the emissions trading system: a fear campaign is what it is and those opposite know it.

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

Mr Hunt interjecting

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

The member for Flinders stands in this place as the alternative minister for the environment. On the question of climate change, the world at present is debating how we deal with global warming: how we bring down carbon emissions into the future; how we do that in concert with other nation states around the world; how we do so as a full participant in the global negotiations on this question; how we do so responsibly in terms of the interests of working Australians as well as Australia’s businesses; and how we do that in an appropriate, considered and deliberative fashion. In six months this government has made more progress on these matters than those opposite did in 12 years. They should hang their heads in shame as they embark upon the next fear campaign by the Liberal Party.