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

I think I dealt with that in the first question. I do not think there is a suggestion anywhere in the world that we will not see growth in emissions from certain countries. The question is: to what extent is growth in your economy linked to growth in emissions? Other countries have recognised that prosperity in the future will require GDP growth to be delinked from growth in pollution. We cannot continue to have an industrial-age approach to this which says that every unit of economic growth that we have will equivalently increase pollution by a unit. We have to delink those. A great many economies around the world recognise that to be a first-rate economy, you need to be a clean energy economy. That is why China is investing in the sorts of things I described and that is why we need a price on carbon in Australia.