Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, if we are forced to wait, the costs will be far greater. There are no soft options and there are no cost-free ways to act.

There are two certainties about climate change: all nations including Australia are going to have to take action, and the longer we leave it the harder and the costlier it will be. I think there is a great danger to the Australian economy in having to play catch-up if we blindly refuse to change now, when we have the time to change. I do not think there is a ‘do nothing’ option, contrary to what the coalition would have people believe. Ignoring this situation is a bit like ignoring an illness until it becomes too much. Like treating an illness, early treatment is always better than later remedy.

We do believe that the large polluters should pay for their pollution. We think that they should look for less polluting ways to operate. We believe that every cent paid by the large polluters should go to families, businesses and climate programs that will help drive that transition to a clean energy future. This is all about making Australia’s largest companies pay for their pollution so that they have an incentive to improve their performance. It is not going to come out of the pay packet each fortnight, as some in the coalition would have people believe. There will be changes, but we will give people assistance so that they can be supported in the transition to a lower carbon economy.

There have been plenty of references to the question of which party is the party of the markets. What we believe is that a market based mechanism to reduce carbon emissions will provide the best chance for Australia’s standard of living to improve. It will certainly have less of a negative consequence than the direct action scheme of those opposite and it will be less damaging than the ‘no change’ option, which many of the climate change sceptics believe in. Lord Stern has said that the cost of inaction will be greater than the cost of action. If the views of those opposite prevail and defeat the proposals we have for setting up a carbon price, I believe that Australia’s prosperity and our future jobs will be at serious risk.

I think that the opposition’s position is, sadly, saturated in contradictions. On the one hand they get involved in organising climate change sceptic rallies, whilst on the other hand they want to put forward their direct action on climate change policy. On the one hand we have a Leader of the Opposition who thinks that climate change is ‘crap’ or, at least, that the science is not settled, whilst their alternative leader, the member for Wentworth, has made belief in climate change central to his political brand and values.

On one hand we have the daily media stunts of the opposition, designed to scare people about the impact of a carbon price, while at the same time they deny that they are running a scare campaign. On one hand we see the crocodile tears feigned by the opposition about cost-of-living pressures, but on the other hand they have the unfunded direct action package that would blow a multibillion-dollar hole in the budget and that would have to be paid for by taxpayers.

On the one hand—

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