Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator O'Sullivan, when you get a price on carbon you can create the jobs of the future. That is the issue. I first came across this it might have been 15 years ago with the president of Ford Europe. When I went to Europe Ford was saying, 'We need to deal with this; this is a real issue, a live issue. Carbon pollution is causing problems and we as a company will have to deal with it.' They were talking about magnesium bodies on cars, aluminium bodies on cars, reducing the weight of cars and different engine blocks. They were talking about diesel instead of fuel. They were looking at electric cars. What could they do? These are the people who are actually out there creating jobs and employing people around the world. They said, 'We need to do something about it.' Big business was saying we need to do something about it.

The reason we are not doing something about it here is that the coalition are beholden to the mining industry.