David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

On that interjection, one might reflect that the very first markets in every sphere of activity were. There is demand. There is supply. There will be a market and that market will set a price. If those opposite want to have angst about the design of this market, let them do that. But surely their first order of business should be to try and craft a market of their own. But they are not doing that; of course they are not. Those opposite are seeking to achieve the same target that this government are seeking to achieve, but they have looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. It is a five-year tractor factory in the Urals that sits as the guiding light for the policy of those opposite.

While it is estimated that the carbon price designed by this government and to be delivered by this government will cost something in the order of $550 per person, I have seen an assessment that under the coalition's policy it will cost $750 per person. How can this be so? Those opposite are crafting a policy which hinges on the idea of a committee of cabinet handing out enormous sums of money to their friends, the polluters. The extraordinary proposition, as Malcolm Turnbull has so eloquently put it, is that those who are polluting will be paid to abate their polluting. Under their own system there is absolutely no incentive for polluters to reform their behaviour. But wait; it gets worse. Under their carbon plan, 70 per cent of the carbon to be abated is to be abated through soil carbon. As we know, soil carbon is not presently accounted for in the Kyoto accounting standards. So their 70 per cent target is something that cannot be accounted for in the international system. That may be an unfortunate thing— (Time expired)