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

I thank the senator for his question. I have to say it sounds remarkably like a question I got in the last fortnight from Senator Cormann, even with the reference to Mr Henry Ergas. I make a number of points in response to the question. The first is that this government has released an unprecedented amount of information in relation to not only the clean energy package broadly but also the modelling. The modelling that has been released most recently has updated the modelling which was done previously in Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: Australia’s Low Pollution Future, and that modelling was, I think, the largest modelling exercise undertaken by government in the nation's history. An enormous amount of information has been released with both sets of modelling.

The senator refers to the need for eminent economists to look at this. I remind the senator that his own leader has in fact said that he is not interested in the views of economists when it comes to carbon policy. He has said, 'Economists are wrong.' He has said, 'I am not interested in what the economists say,' just as he is not interested in what the scientists say when it comes to climate science.

My final point is this: we have been in this chamber arguing about climate policy for years, and that is just in this chamber. Senators will recall the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was argued and debated in this chamber three times in addition to the myriad inquiries. There has never been an occasion, no matter how much science, no matter how much economic policy and no matter how much modelling, on which Senator Boswell has countenanced voting for a carbon price and I doubt that there ever will be. (Time expired)