Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to her statement:

The question of truth in government is not a game—and it is not my game; it is about … what a government should … say to the Australian people when it is seeking their trust and their mandate at an election. Anybody in the Australian community … would say … that what they want to know before the election is just the simple truth.

Does the Prime Minister still believe that the question of truth in government is not a game? If so, why is the Prime Minister refusing to give the Australian people the final say on the world's biggest carbon tax?

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

Certainly I do believe that truth in politics is very important and I refer the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to her statement in September 2008:

The Liberal Party has a policy of both protecting the planet and protecting Australia. We support, in principle, an Emissions Trading Scheme ….

Was she telling the truth then or did she tell the truth by the way she voted today because both cannot possibly be the truth, can they?