Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Dear me. We will come back to that another time. Where was I? The policy issue that really matters is the one that people will look back on in five or 10 or 15 years time and that is how did this government—how did this parliament—deal with the issue of climate change. Let us remind ourselves of what the big policy issues are, when we get beyond Senator Joyce screaming at us. First, the science: unlike the other side, we on this side have a belief that the science is clear—that climate change is real and human beings are contributing to it and, more importantly, that climate change poses a substantial risk not only to the globe but also to us in this country. If you do believe that, then the question really is: what do you want to do about it? The second point is that we are, if not the, certainly one of the highest per capita emitters in the world. What does that mean in simple terms? It means that we pollute more per person than almost any other country in the world. It is not viable for us to say that this is not something that we should deal with. It also tells us what sort of an economy we have. We have an economy that is very much predicated on putting a lot of pollution into the atmosphere.