Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

This government is absolutely committed to strong, effective and appropriate action on climate change, including through our $3½ billion climate change package. I'm sure you would remember, when we came into government in 2013—do you know what the situation was in terms of meeting the Kyoto Protocol targets by 2020? We were 755 million tonnes of CO2 behind. That was after a six-year period of a Labor-Greens government. I know that the Greens part of that government was not so supportive of Labor's carbon pollution reduction scheme. I can understand that. I had a lot of sympathy for that at the time.

Do you know where we're at now? After six years of Liberal-National coalition government we are running 367 million tonnes of CO2 ahead of our 2020 emissions reduction target and we have a clear plan to meet the 2030 emissions reduction target of 26 per cent that we signed up to in Paris. You know what? The Liberal-National Party will always pursue sensible environmental policy in a way that is economically responsible. You can go to your supporters and continue to try to make them believe that you can shut down the economy and that that is a sensible way to go. That is not the way we're doing it. We are telling the Australian people very openly and very transparently that we want to do the right thing by the environment, meeting our emissions reduction targets that we've committed to but in a way that is economically responsible, because we want families around Australia to continue to have the best possible opportunity to get ahead.