Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to this report in the Australian Financial Review today confirming that the government has already walked away from tax cuts linked to her carbon tax. Given that these phantom tax cuts have been much hyped for days, including by the Prime Minister who described them as a ‘live option’, will she now apologise to Australian taxpayers for misleading them yet again?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Firstly, I would suggest to him that he read the story carefully. Secondly, I will confirm to him that tax cuts are a live option for providing assistance to Australian households under this government. Of course, if the Leader of the Opposition were ever elected, the very first thing he would do is rip money out of the purses and wallets of Australians, take away the household assistance we have provided and then impose on them a charge of $720 a year for his failed plan to address climate change, even though we know—or most days, we know—that the Leader of the Opposition does not believe in climate change. Some days he does, some days he does not.

This all comes down to a question of judgment, a question of leadership and to making decisions in the national interest. If you are acting in the national interest, if you are showing judgment, then you accept the science that climate change is real. You accept the economic advice that the best way of tackling it is by pricing carbon. You accept the further economic advice that the best way of doing that is through an emissions trading scheme and, if you believe in fairness, then you act to use the money raised from carbon pricing to assist Australian households.

Let me say again to the Leader of the Opposition: in assisting Australian households, tax cuts are a live option. Then of course you use the money raised from carbon pricing to assist industries to adjust and then you use money raised from carbon pricing to tackle climate change through funding climate change programs. These things are questions of judgment and questions of leadership. It is the judgment and the leadership that Prime Minister John Howard showed when he went to the 2007 election promising an emissions trading scheme. But, as Australians saw yesterday, they can never expect leadership or judgment from the Leader of the Opposition.