Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

My job as finance minister is to make sure that every dollar of taxpayers’ money that the federal government spends is spent wisely and is not trashed, like you lot did for 13 years and wiped it down the drain. It is my job to make sure that federal government spending is wisely spent. I am happy to report that in this budget we are putting on the table a range of new policy measures at a cost to the Australian taxpayers of some $741 million over five years with respect to climate change. That includes allowing tax deductions for the costs of establishing carbon sink forests, $197 million to help protect the world’s forests, and the extension and expansion of the Photovoltaic Rebate Program. We are spending $126 million establishing the Australian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation. The CSIRO, which is a great institution in this country and a worthy recipient, will receive $103 million for a new national research flagship on climate adaptation. On top of all that, we are spending $10 billion over the next 10 years on the most important environmental problem facing this country, the risk to the Murray-Darling. These are things of which we should all be very proud. We are pleased with the prudent expenditures that we are making in ensuring that Australia plays its part in the job of ensuring that we contain our greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that Australia is contributing, through those greenhouse gas emissions, to global warming. But we will ensure that that expenditure is done wisely and prudently and in accord with the responsibility we have as the custodian of taxpayers’ money. The one thing we will not do is bankrupt the Australian economy by your ludicrous proposal to unilaterally cut emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years.