Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley and would like to congratulate him on his first speech, which he delivered earlier today. I extend to him, certainly, my warm welcome. We were colleagues in our former working lives and I am very pleased that he is a colleague in the parliament with us now.

The issue of climate change presents very serious public policy questions, and they are not going to be answered by the sort of opportunistic rubbish we have been hearing again from the opposition in question time. A carbon price is a significant and necessary economic reform. It is a reform that will create an incentive to cut pollution; it is a reform that will drive investment in low-emissions technologies and clean energy and create new jobs; and it is a reform that will ensure our long-term economic competitiveness. A market mechanism is the most efficient and cost-effective way of establishing a carbon price, and that is a very widely held view.

It was a point that was made again yesterday by former Prime Minister John Howard in the Press Club—that is, that a market mechanism is the most efficient way of reducing carbon pollution and introducing a price on carbon into our economy. Of course, Mr Howard made the point that he continued to support an emissions trading scheme as the best policy response to climate change. We also know that that is the advice the former Prime Minister gave to the shadow Treasurer during the time of the leadership upheaval in the Liberal Party towards the end of last year.

In contrast, the so-called direct action policy now championed by the opposition, using taxpayers’ funds to try to pick winners, is more akin to a Soviet style command—

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