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

What I was explaining to the member and to the House—it was exactly the same thing I explained to the workers in the Latrobe Valley when I spoke to them personally—was that we would go through this contract for closure process, it would take a number of years, and obviously we would work with any regions affected with structural adjustment because we want every region in the country to have a bright future.

Opposition member interjecting—

The member who is now interjecting may want to direct his attention to our Clean Energy Future package, our carbon pricing package, and he will see there allocated $200 million for structural adjustment purposes.

The point of going through this, and my visit to the Latrobe Valley, is to verify that no matter where I am—whether I am in this parliament, in front of workers from a power station or talking to people who are very passionate about climate change and reducing carbon pollution—I say the same thing. And I think that that is appropriate. What I do not think is appropriate—and it bears directly on the member's question about jobs—is for the opposition to say different things to different audiences. So we have the shadow minister for finance, who says that the policy of the opposition is the closure of the Hazelwood power station. And then the Leader of the Opposition, when he was out there trying to be a friend of the workers—when he was in that guise, which is completely contrary to his 'friend of business' guise, completely contrary to his 'friend of farmers' guise and completely contrary to his 'friend of those passionate about climate change' guise—then said:

There will be no act of policy from the next Coalition government or from any Coalition government that I'm associated with that artificially foreshortens the life of these power stations.

The only way that these statements make sense is if the shadow minister is envisaging a situation where the Leader of the Opposition is not associated with a future coalition government. I will allow them to explain that.

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