George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, as I think your question implicitly acknowledges, this is a very important decision. It's a very important decision and it will be approached by the Australian government in an appropriately careful way, which is what we are doing now. You and your colleagues have asked about this matter during the course of the past week, and the answer hasn't changed. The Australian government is considering the recommendation of the Finkel report in relation to a clean-energy target. We are considering that recommendation very carefully and very thoroughly. We are adopting an appropriate process for the consideration of that recommendation and we will be making a decision in the near future. Senator Carr, that is the way grown-up governments behave. The way grown-up governments behave is to consider carefully the policy implications of important recommendations and to make their decisions accordingly.

But, as I pointed out to you and your colleagues last week, Senator Carr, the one thing this government will not be doing, which is what bedevilled energy policy during the period when you were in government, is being enslaved by ideology. We will not, as the Labor party was and as state Labor governments—notably in South Australia and Victoria—are at the moment, be enslaved by ideology. We will be making a practical decision, based on engineering, based on science and based on economics, in order to ensure that whatever energy mix we have will be platform or source agnostic and be most serviceable to the twin objectives of affordability and reliability—two objectives that your government signally failed to achieve.