Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If it pleases Senator Heffernan, I will withdraw my statement that he does not care. I will take a moment sometime in my term in this place to read your first speech, Senator Heffernan, to see how much you do care. I will change my words. What the coalition have done thus far is focus on the politics, focus on the political point-scoring parts of a really important reform for Australia, a really important reform that makes us part of a world that is transforming into a clean energy economy. Rather than focus on the detail—and there is a lot of detail when it comes to a huge reform such as this—and rather than moving amendments or asking questions about the clauses in the bills, they have instead focused on the politics. They have focused on the things that will get them headlines. They are dumbing this down and the way that they do that is, for example, by making out that individuals will be paying a carbon tax, which is simply not true. The coalition know this. They have all the detail in this package of bills. They know that the big polluters will pay. The package of bills is introducing a carbon price mechanism to around 500 big polluters, not to individual households.