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

First—and I am sure it was just a slip of the tongue of Senator Boswell—I am no longer the minister for climate change; I am the Minister for Finance and Deregu­lation. But I do represent the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and I am very happy to take your question. The answer to it is this: because Australians are not slackers. We do not simply sit back and say that the rest of the world should do something but we should just do nothing. It is not the Australian way for us to say: 'There's this global problem, but you know what? We're just going to wash our hands of it and make sure everybody else acts.'

Senator Boswell, you used to believe that that was wrong as well, because your party went to the 2007 election with John Howard, the then Prime Minister, promising the Australian people he would put a price on carbon as the most sensible, economically efficient way to deal with climate change. That was your policy, but you have abrogated any pretence of sensible public policy in this debate, instead preferencing a scaremongering and fearmongering cam­paign that essentially says that Australia should not play our part. It is true that—