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

I have spoken at length in this chamber, and I am happy to speak again if the Senate and the senator wants a more detailed response. We do not support these amendments. We do have a different approach. We think that having a measured transition supporting jobs in existing industries is sound public policy. We have put forward a set of propositions which do not shield anyone completely from the carbon price—people still face the carbon price, so people are asked to do their share—but which recognise that until there is more substantively widespread global action some of our industries will face a carbon price where their competitors do not or will face a different carbon price.

So we have been very clear about our policy objectives in relation to providing this transitional assistance. We do not believe that the assistance before the chamber is practical and nor can it be effectively calibrated to achieve the objects of emissions-intensive trade-exposed assistance. More importantly, in many ways it does not provide certainty to business in relation to the assistance that it is going to receive. It is important as we are going through an economic transition that that certainty is provided. Business needs to have a clear sense of how to manage carbon risk and what the level of assistance will be. I do not want to get drawn into another political debate. I have put on the record before my continued rebuttal of the Greens proposition that every time a government or an individual does something it is because they have been corrupted by lobbyists or pressured. It is somewhat tiresome that they simply refuse to believe that people can make decisions that are different from theirs because they have come to a different view. That is the case in relation to a whole range of areas to do with this policy.