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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As I said, we will use the opportunities of this parliament, and I know there are many coalition members who want to join us to work on pricing carbon. To the Leader of the Opposition, what I can say is this: the Leader of the Opposition completely misunderstands the purpose of economic modelling. You do not throw into economic modelling a general proposition that pricing carbon discourages carbon pollution and is an economically efficient strategy and ask it to spit something back out. Economic modelling is for the purpose of diagnosing and looking at a particular price. You would not go to an economic model and say, ‘If I constrict supply of a commodity, will the price go up?’ An economic model will tell you that if you constrict supply by 10 per cent then you can anticipate the following price effect. That is what economic modelling is for.

So I would say to the Leader of the Opposition: I know that he is grossly embarrassed by his weathervane approach to climate change.

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