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

The reason we want to price pollution is that, unless we put a price on it, we will keep polluting. The whole point of pricing pollution is to give an incentive to pollute less, to invest in clean energy and to tackle climate change. It is true that we have to work through how you transition a very highly carbon-intensive economy like Australia to a low-polluting economy. As we have taken this policy forward, the Australian people will have seen that we have been very focused on how we do this efficiently, effectively and at lowest cost.