House debates

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Questions without Notice

Carbon Pricing

2:38 pm

Photo of Julia GillardJulia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

What every member of this parliament knows is that the flow through price impact of asking the biggest polluters in our country to pay the price of their carbon pollution to Australians is less than one per cent—0.7 per cent—of CPI. It is as a result of that flow through price change of less than one per cent of CPI—less than a cent in a dollar—that the government has determined it is appropriate to use more than half of the revenue generated by carbon pricing to help pensioners with an increase of $338, to help people raising children with an increase in family payments, to help Australians earning less than $80,000 a year with a tax cut and to associate that tax change with a major tax reform, which will mean one million Australians will not be in the tax system, will not pay any tax and will see each and every week the rewards for working.

I would say to the member who asked the question and who in other iterations of his political life has been prepared to contemplate reforms, including reforms like carbon pricing, that perhaps instead of following the Leader of the Opposition's fear campaign, he should listen to a former Liberal leader, and I am referring to Dr John Hewson, who has appeared in this book, the 'Say Yes Campaign Book'. He is the former employer of the Leader of the Opposition—that was a bad decision, but he has made one good one. He says:

I say yes to carbon pricing, because this is the most important thing we can do for our nation this century.

A former Liberal leader joining every other living liberal Leader in favour of carbon pricing, all except the wrecker over here.

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