Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. This morning, Treasury told Senate estimates it had not modelled the impact of the government's net zero policy. Why didn't the Prime Minister ask Treasury to model the impact? Why won't the Prime Minister release the modelling he claims to have?

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

The modelling will be released in the next couple of weeks. The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources is the department that does the modelling on this work. It was supported in that work by Treasury. I will ask the Treasurer to update further.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Treasury did provide advice to DISER, who undertook the modelling. In fact, they seconded Treasury officials to DISER for the purpose of assisting with that modelling. My department stayed in close contact with DISER throughout that modelling process. With respect to the advice that Treasury provided to DISER, it was about the risk premium of not joining the global consensus around net zero by 2050. It was also about some of those long-running assumptions, like population growth, that were taken into account with respect to the DISER modelling.

The point I want to make is that the coalition, in the announcement of our plan to reach net zero by 2050, has put in place a practical and responsible approach, joining a global consensus to take action and recognising we need a global solution to what is a global problem. We have been able to reduce emissions by more than 20 per cent since 2005 and, at the same time, strengthen and grow our economy by around 45 per cent in that time, and we've seen an additional three million people in work. So our commitment is what we have delivered in the past and we will deliver again in the future, which is lowering emissions, strengthening our economy and creating more jobs.