Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for a very important question because the government, unlike the opposition, believes that climate change is real and that we do need to transform our economy. But this is a very big reform for our economy, a very big structural reform. One of the reasons Australia has had 20 years of continuous growth is past governments and members of this House have signed up to fundamental market based reforms, which have given us a strength and resilience that have served us well and that have given us 20 continuous years of growth. This is a reform that we must embark on to ensure that we have another 20 years of continuous growth and do not fall behind the rest of the world. That is why economists like Nichols Stern and Ross Garnaut are telling us that there is a fundamental problem here that must be fixed. The problem is that the largest polluters just continue to pump pollution into the atmosphere, and that has cost. It has cost to the environment, it has cost to the community and it has cost to our economy. That is why we must have a market based approach to deal with it. We need to give the largest polluters the incentive to reduce carbon pollution and that is what we have to do. That is why we describe this as a fundamental market based reform. Of course, we are not alone in this view. That is what the Treasury believes we must do. That is what the Productivity Commission believes we must do. It is what the OECD believes we must do. But all the oddballs on the other side of the House are now in climate change denial.

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