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

I was making the point about price signals that as long as pollution is free there is no incentive to reduce it. I think that is, frankly, self-evident. The whole reason that you put a price on pollution is to give a price signal incentive to business to reduce its pollution and to look to find lower-polluting ways of doing business and to give an incentive to invest in clean energy and in cleaner technologies. We are a very highly carbon-intensive economy. That is as a result of the nature of our economy. That means we have to transition if we agree that we have to reduce pollution. As I recall it, the opposition agree on that.