Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad that the opposition has chosen to take note of the answers to these two questions because it demonstrates that this new opposition under yet another new opposition leader has not really changed that much. We saw a demonstration in question time today of the climate change sceptics, reinforced again by the behaviour of the new opposition leader, not only with his new policy but by the sceptics with whom he is still happy to associate. We also saw the same global financial crisis scepticism they have demonstrated for the last 12 months. Despite the fact that about half of the opposition’s front bench in the Senate were with us here today, we still saw that very sloppy and audacious approach to policy, and I will deal with part of that when I deal with Senator Evans’s discussion about the issue of compensation that was before us in the Senate today.

Looking at the week, we have had the very sloppy approach to policies that this opposition might take forward in an election year. We have had talk about the very successful My School website, yet a very unclear position and, if I recall the behaviour of the shadow parliamentary secretary for education, some disquiet as to how the nature of the questions being asked in this place reflects the ultimate policy position that this opposition may take. The next day we dealt with workplace relations, and once again there was the approach of trying to have it both ways about how industrial relations arrangements should work in this country. Finally, today, there was again the approach of trying to have things both ways about how we tackle and deal with climate change. There was a failure, as Senator Wong highlighted, to accept what even the previous Prime Minister accepted, that there is a cost that needs to be managed, and that the lack of any compensation arrangements in the coalition’s policy means that cost will need to be borne elsewhere. Even Senator Fielding has acknowledged that it is going to be a cost to our schools, to our education system, to our health system, if we go down the path that is being proposed by Mr Abbott.

Let me deal briefly with the NBN issue. What the audit report did highlight, as Senator Conroy pointed out when he welcomed the report, was that the global financial crisis was a factor in the aborted request for proposals process. This was something Senator Barnett failed to mention at all when he sought to pretend and put into the report comments that simply do not exist. The report does not at all indicate that Senator Conroy misled the Senate. As was highlighted this morning by the Prime Minister when he also dealt with this report, the $17 million needs to be considered not only in the context of what occurred last year with the global financial crisis—which this government has managed in a world-first, successful and enormously creditable process—but also in the context of the overall cost of this program. These are again points that Senator Barnett did not raise.

Let me conclude briefly with some points about the compensation arrangements. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is designed to limit Australia’s carbon emissions—something that Tony Abbott’s program will not be able to do, and certainly not to the magnitude necessary to reach our targets. It does this by making polluters pay for the pollution they produce and rewarding those who reduce their carbon pollution. The scheme includes direct cash assistance for nine out of 10 Australian households, and low-income families are expected to receive 120 per cent of any anticipated costs in direct cash assistance. So there is not only full compensation but more than full compensation. What the opposition failed to understand today was that you can have a tandem approach in relation to compensation. You can have this direct cash assistance but also an ongoing process, which is the annual review of household assistance packages as part of the budget process. So we are saying that not only have we made assessments that we believe will be able to provide adequate compensation but we have also built in a mechanism which will enable us to review that and ensure that Australian households, Australian families, are properly compensated into the future.