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

Senator Cash, is this rabid interjecting the brave new world of the Liberal Party? I do not want to get into this again, unless Senator Abetz really wants to use up more of the Senate’s time—we reached 40 hours of debate on this earlier today, including the second reading debate; I am not sure what we are up to now. After the senator’s questions about the Treasury figures, he might be interested to know I did get some advice on this. In relation to the net migration assumptions, I am advised that there was an increase in the second Intergenerational report. It was after the Treasury modelling—and I am just trying to recall if it was earlier this year; I think it was, but I can check that. The net migration that was assumed in the second Intergenerational report increased to 150,000 from 110,000. In the population projections in the third Intergenerational report there was a further increase in the assumption of net migration to 180,000. That was subsequent to the assumptions in the Treasury modelling, which was released in October last year; hence, the increase in population from 33 to 35 at 2050. Senator Abetz wants to make a big issue of this, but, again, I say this is obviously a question of when you hit that population figure. Finally, I also indicate that the advice I received from Treasury in response to this query is that the changes would not alter any of the conclusions in the report.