Belinda Neal (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can the Prime Minister update the House on the importance of dealing with climate with the least-cost policy response? Can he also update the House on the recent commentary on alternative proposals for climate change policy and the importance of being up front with the Australian people about the cost-effectiveness of alternative policies?

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

I thank the honourable member for her question. I do notice on this question of climate change that, within barely 24 hours of the release of the alternative plan, we had about three or four questions from those opposite on climate change, and then it went elsewhere.

I am asked about the integrity and transparency of dealing with the effectiveness and costs of different approaches to climate change. The government has described the proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday as a giant climate con job, and we have done so for three or four specific reasons. The first is this: it does less, it costs more and it is totally unfunded. These are very basic propositions. It does less because they do not cap carbon; it costs more because the cost to taxpayers is 300 per cent more than that put forward by the government. The reason that occurs is that they have let the big polluters off scot-free and instead they have transferred the burden to taxpayers and consumers. That is con No. 1.

What is con No. 2? Con No. 2 is: where do they fund this totally unfunded scheme from? The Minister for Finance and Deregulation referred today to Senator Joyce’s intervention in this debate, and the bottom line is that if you have, at their calculation, more than $10 billion invested in this scheme—$10 billion possibly rising—then the question is that you can fund it by an increased tax or you can fund it by cutting services for schools, for hospitals or for defence. In these areas today they were asked and they ruled out none. That is con No. 2.

What is con No. 3? Con No. 3 is the performance last night by the Leader of the Opposition on the absolute giant con at the middle of this overall con job, and that is his comparison of apples with oranges. He was challenged three times by Kerry O’Brien to come clean on his so-called giant tax. Three times he ducked and weaved—this is the ‘straight-talking’ Leader of the Opposition: three times asked a straight question, duck and weave, duck and weave and duck and weave—because the giant con at the centre of it was his equation of the total value of the carbon market on the one hand with the value of a total tax and direct tax on the Australian consumer and household on the other. That is the absolute con. He knows that. Everyone who follows this debate knows that.

But, as they say, there is more. I would go to the whole question of the bona fides of their engagement in this debate on climate change generally. We know the Leader of the Opposition has said in the past, in his own words, that climate change is ‘absolute crap’. Those are his words, not mine. But he has also sought to invoke the authority of others to legitimise the plan that he put forward yesterday. Let me quote to you what he said. He said yesterday:

I do want to draw your attention to the work that has been done by Frontier Economics who have said that our policy is economically and environmentally responsible.

Furthermore, he went on and said:

… it was incidentally designed by Frontier Economics who are very happy with the scheme that we are putting up today.

For the information of the House, that was yesterday. Today we have had some developments. The managing director of Frontier Economics, Mr Danny Price, said a few hours ago the following:

Well, we’ve looked at Tony Abbott’s scheme—two things, really: the quantity of abatement from the different sources and whether the costs actually add up. We’ve never said anything about whether that’s more cost effective than the CPRS or, indeed, what we proposed, so it’s been a very limited review in this case.

But there is more, because the managing director of Frontier Economics, Mr Danny Price, was invoked by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, if I read it correctly, as part of the mob who designed it; it was designed by Frontier Economics, to quote him. The Leader of the Opposition says here:

I do want to draw your attention to the work that has been done by Frontier Economics who have said that our policy is economically and environmentally responsible.

That is what the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday. Let me go on, therefore, to what Frontier Economics have said today on radio. The radio presenter said:

Mr Abbott’s saying he’s got an emissions reduction fund which will raise $1 billion over four years but, okay, he’s not calling it a carbon tax, but that’s a tax. That’s got to be money found that would normally be spent on health, education et cetera, so it’s a tax indirectly.

That is the radio presenter. Here is the answer given by Danny Price, the managing director of Frontier Economics. In response to that question, he says:

Yep. So, instead of under the government’s scheme where producers and consumers are having to buy permits and the government handing the money back again, what’s happening again is the government will have to pay for it by changing taxes and changing expenditures.

That is his description of what they are putting forward. Can I say to those opposite: let me just repeat what Mr Price from Frontier Economics said:

So, instead of under the government’s scheme where producers and consumers are having to buy permits and the government handing the money back again, what’s happening again is the government will have to pay for it by changing taxes and changing expenditures.

Let us be very clear about this.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

With those opposite you always know when there is a problem because the volume goes up on their side. So we have this from Frontier Economics, which was cited by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday when he said:

I do want to draw your attention to the work that has been done by Frontier Economics who have said that our policy is economically and environmentally responsible.

They have said:

We’ve never said anything about whether that’s more cost effective than the CPRS or, indeed, what we proposed, so it’s been a very limited review in this case.

If you are going to go out there and try and claw together some credibility from Frontier Economics, to invoke their name in the debate, and then the managing director of Frontier Economics comes out 24 hours later and effectively distances that organisation from the detail of the plan which has been put forward, what that does is let the cat out of the bag. The Leader of the Opposition says he is a straight talker. He came out yesterday and said that this organisation, Frontier Economics, were pretty happy with what they had put forward. Frontier Economics have had a different point of view put out to the public today. If you cannot even line up Frontier Economics behind your plan 24 hours after you have released it, I think you have a credibility problem.

Always remember, when it comes to the credibility on this question, what the former Leader of the Opposition had to say about the current Leader of the Opposition on climate change. When it comes to climate change—and Mr Abbott has changed his position four or five times over the last five or six months—the former Leader of the Opposition says that the current Leader of the Opposition would go in and say, ‘Mate, you know that on climate change I am just a bit of a political weathervane’. All that goes to underpin the point that he believes that climate change, in his own words, is ‘absolute crap’ and the entire scheme he has put forward is not effective, does not add up and therefore, frankly, does not deserve the support of the Australian people.

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.