Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It has gone backwards. I recall coming into this place in 1996 and one of the very early speeches I gave was reviewing the then Howard government’s absolutely massive cutbacks to both the higher education system in this country and the research and development budgets. It was only through the re-election of a Labor government that the integrity of that public investment in our public universities’ research and development was finally restored, and this was through a period of economic growth under the Howard government which we know was completely and utterly squandered. We did not invest in our future. We did not invest in the kinds of jobs that our future will be built on.

We find ourselves in 2011 arguing the basics of a carbon trading scheme that was established as bipartisan policy a long time ago and only abandoned by the coalition, by the opposition, when it was politically expedient for them to do so. The betrayal by the opposition of the Australian public as a result of their walking away from a then bipartisan commitment to an emissions trading scheme for Australia was one of the greatest abrogations of their public responsibility as a major political party in this country.

We now find ourselves in the midst of a climate debate again reasserting, as is the responsible thing for a government to do, the strong science that underpins the argument for a price on carbon, yet we are dealing with such a base opposition that they are even contending the science. These issues were resolved a long time ago and the science continues to come in. I noted with great interest today that Senator Wong shared with you some of the scientific facts about climate change in the chamber. I think it is important to remind those opposite that it is one thing to just sit there and say mistruths again and again about the science; it is another thing to be confronted with the facts on a daily basis, which we will continue to do.

We find ourselves today having a debate about a price on carbon and whether or not that is somehow creating fear amongst business. I can tell you that, apart from a number of notable contributors to this debate, business needs a price on carbon. They need it for business certainty. They need it to be confident that the Australian economy is going to be prepared for the future. If we are going to be serious about ensuring that our economy can compete, we need to put a price on carbon. The government has again done the responsible thing within the circumstances. We have put a price on carbon that is a price on pollution for Australia. It is an appropriate first step; the polluters must pay. Call it a carbon tax if you like but the polluters will pay it. The proposal by the opposition is to make householders pay through their so-called direct action plan. Those are the alternatives confronting the Australian public at the moment. We are a government that is taking a sensible first step to a market based trading scheme for carbon and, in the first instance, placing a price on carbon for which the details will be resolved as we go forward.

Senator Troeth stood up here and talked about fear among business and then gave a speech promoting fear. It was unfounded in facts and uninformed by the actual policy that we have put forward, and it ignored the opportunity that we have put out there to allow business to provide feedback and interact with this government on the details of the policy. This is the most responsible way to go to allow that kind of input. Again, Labor has put in place a policy that makes polluters pay and we will provide for those householders and for industries affected by that in the first instance. (Time expired)