Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

As I indicated both to Senator Milne and, just before, to the minister, I have some general questions. That is why I thought it appropriate to try to bring them up at the beginning of a new, fresh amendment and not intervene in amendments that have been discussed at some length. The first in my series of questions relates to the government’s future planning in relation to the size of Australia’s population. Mr Rudd has this grand vision of 35 million people. Given that we have an emissions cap and we intend, in general terms, to increase our population by 50 per cent over the next couple of decades, that must surely come with a huge impact on the amount of emissions from our country. So I am just wondering whether the policy that was put to Treasury—as part of all the modelling that we had provided to us—was that we were dealing with a potential population of, as I understand it, 35 million people by the year 2050.