Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

If I thought that emissions trading would solve Australia’s problem we would do it, but it will not. All it does is put a new tax on the economy. What we know is that we need multitrillion dollars of investment in new technologies to capture carbon and bury it underground, to bring on geothermal, to roll out more solar cells, to get people to change light bulbs across the country. We know what it takes. They are practical measures involving investment, but what Labor and the Greens want to do is to smother the economy. They want to close down coal mines and communities. They want to massively reduce the size of the economy and reduce jobs.

We want to have economic growth and low greenhouse gas emissions. We are going to do both because we are committed to it with practical measures. I will present an entire report which will show to the whole world exactly where the growth is, but one of the big growths is Labor state governments continuing to build coal-fired power stations all around the place. That is the main growth: energy production built by state governments. I am not condemning them for it, but that is where it comes from. (Time expired)