Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

The first point to be made is that I think the comment about working families never having been better off was actually the previous Prime Minister’s. We have been upfront about the fact that in tackling climate change there is not a cost-free option. The Prime Minister and other ministers, including me, have been completely upfront about that. We have also said that Professor Garnaut’s review shows, just as Lord Nicholas Stern’s report showed, that the costs of failing to act are greater than the costs of action now.

We published last year, through the Treasury October modelling report, the low-pollution modelling report, an outline of what was the most comprehensive modelling undertaken by the government. We set out very clearly the economic costs of imposing a price on carbon. We made it very clear what the sorts of transitional costs would be. In response to that, the Prime Minister, in his Press Club announcement of the white paper in December, outlined a very comprehensive household assistance package which focused primarily on low-income families but also on middle-income families. The senator may not recall that under that approach at least half of the auction revenue from the permits will go back to households and around 2.8 million households—that is, some 90 per cent of low-income households—will in fact receive some 120 per cent or more of their cost of living increase over the first two years of the scheme. Some 97 per cent or more of middle-income households will receive some assistance. (Time expired)