Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

This question is almost identical to the question Senator Gallagher asked me yesterday. Indeed, I will happily refer to the answer I gave yesterday. What this government will do is make sure that we invest, as we have done successfully since our election in 2013, to reduce emissions for the nation. Our emissions have been reducing at rates far in excess of many other nations around the world. They have reduced since 2005, as I said before, in excess of countries like Canada or Germany or United States or New Zealand. We will also do so through investments in a way that supports a transition in regional communities. In particular, confronting, as we do, the changed global environment in terms of changes in our commodities markets and changes in investment markets as other parts of the world make their decisions in relation to net zero, we see an even heightened importance in relation to backing and supporting Australian communities who will be impacted by those changed decisions happening overseas but who also face, in some cases, opportunities created by those changing environments overseas.

We'll be investing to back those communities—make no bones about it—as we have all along. Indeed, our investments all along have achieved the outcome of reducing emissions without the types of costs that those opposite, in the alternative policy regime, sought to place on those communities. Our approach of backing technology and incentives to drive investment towards emissions reduction is achieving outcomes—without the higher taxes on electricity costs, without the higher costs that hurt jobs and growth across the Australian economy. That was the formula of the Labor Party and those opposite. We have taken a different approach. And despite the fact that we were told time and time again by those opposite that our approach wouldn't see emissions go down, emissions have gone down, so have electricity prices. They've gone down, and jobs have gone up! That's the trifecta that we intend to continue to invest in and support. (Time expired)