Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I reject the premise of Senator Lambie's question. As I outlined in answer to the initial question, I do not agree that there would be a $3 billion saving that passed through to Australian business because the reality is we would create significant investment uncertainty through further changes to a target that was only set 18 months ago and only runs until 2020.

So far from seeing a significant saving for business and a significant generation of new jobs in those circumstances, it is quite likely that we would see the opposite from those types of policies being implemented. But I do absolutely agree that, if you were to go and set further, higher, ill-thought through, unjustified targets for the future, it would absolutely have a devastating impact on jobs, costs, prices for Australians. And that is why we flatly reject the policies of the Labor Party in this regard.