Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The member for North Sydney has said:

The challenge the government faces is that following the demise of the National Energy Guarantee, there is a strong feeling that we don't have a climate change plan.

But the member for Hughes said:

To suggest that more people would have voted for Dave Sharma if we had passed some version of the NEG is a fantasy/

Who's right when it comes to this government's policy on the National Energy Guarantee?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our government will continue to pursue the plans that ensured that we met Kyoto 1, that we will meet Kyoto 2 and that we will meet our commitments in 2030 and the targets that were set throughout the adoption of that policy some years ago—ARENA, the CFC, Snowy 2.0, the small- and large-scale RET, the Emissions Reduction Fund, which continues to be under review in terms of future support. But, most of all, what we understand on this side of the House is that common sense and technology are also driving Australia to a lower emissions outcome. That is what will enable us to achieve those outcomes into the future, not by jacking up people's power prices, as those opposite wish to do, with reckless targets which will see a burden placed on households, on pensioners and on small businesses of greater than the carbon tax they inflicted when they were last in government. Our policies are about reducing electricity prices. Our policies are achieving the emissions reduction targets, which has given us the lowest emissions per capita in 28 years. So we're getting on with the job. We're focusing on the issues that matter equally to Australians—getting their electricity prices down and meeting our obligations to the environment. What are we getting from the Labor Party? Questions about gossip in restaurants. That's what they've been reduced to as on opposition. It doesn't get more 'in the bubble' than that.