Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister famously, previously, said:

I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.

Isn't that exactly what the Prime Minister is doing when it comes to his government's Direct Action policy, and has the Prime Minister sold out his principles to achieve his personal ambition?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his zinger and I have to say that he is showing today a great example of the triumph of hope over experience. Yesterday he asked exactly the same question and, once again, he demonstrated a fundamental failure to understand the climate challenge.

The challenge of responding to climate change in the context of an international agreement is to reduce emissions. It does not matter how you reduce those emissions: whether you have an emissions trading scheme, whether you have an emissions reduction fund, whether you have a carbon tax, whether you have regulation—there are so many tools available, but each of them have different costs and benefits in different contexts and at different times.

What the Australian government, the coalition government, has done—thanks to the hard work of the environment minister—is come up with a set of policies which will have the effect of reducing emissions to the extent proposed by the foreign minister to the Conference of Parties in Paris of 26 and 28 per cent. As the environment minister has demonstrated, he is reducing emissions at a very low cost. That is what the honourable Leader of the Opposition cannot bear. What he cannot stand is the success of this government's policies.

I repeat: the object is to reduce emissions. The Leader of the Opposition consistently—and it is a problem shared by many people in his party—confuses the means with the end. The object is to reduce emissions. We are reducing emissions, and that is the environmental objective of the Conference of Parties. The methods that we have set in place—that the environment minister has set in place—are working, and the Leader of the Opposition cannot bear the truth about our methods.