Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, member for Shortland, they forgot to. But you are dead right: they should at least have had regard to that. The IMF went on to say that what we have done is the least costly option if we are serious about addressing carbon pollution. Their economic forecasts were included in the same document. The IMF actually released an economic forecast that showed Australian economic growth will outstrip all other advanced economies. That is not bad going. But if something came out on Monday you would not think those opposite would have forgotten it by Thursday afternoon.

The Business Council of Australia is not a mob of left-wing ideologues—I think there may be a few on the other side who are associated with it—but in their report Pipeline or pipe dream? Securing Australia's investment future they state:

By 2013, expenditure on capital investment is likely to grow to 30 per cent of GDP and remain at that level for the rest of the decade.

Thirty per cent is a huge growth. They are saying that this compares to 20 per cent for any other OECD economy. We are talking about the level of major projects in the pipeline. We are hearing that in excess of $540 billion worth of projects are lining up.

Shell have come out and said that they are going to be investing more than $30 billion in Australia over the next five years. CEO Peter Voser included a lovely statement. He said that Shell was actively advocating for a price on carbon on a worldwide basis, and that they would want it struck on a market mechanism. This is a company that is very much in the oil and hydrocarbon business coming out and saying that we do need to do that.

Woodside said something similar. I know that those opposite have been talking about Woodside earlier this week but they probably should have stopped and listened to the comments of Peter Coleman, who is the CEO. He said:

Woodside and our peers benefit enormously from Australia’s low sovereign risk profile and open investment regime.

Australia is a place that major oil and gas companies want to do business.

Where is the growth occurring in our economy? On the North West Shelf, in Queensland and the Timor Sea. And who is investing up there? Woodside. That is where the jobs are going. And here is the CEO saying that this is a place where his competitors also want to do business.

We were lampooned for the fact that we were returning to a surplus. The only concern they have on the other side of the chamber is that they had a view that we should have an aspiration to have a surplus. They can be aspirational because when they went to the last election they could not find $11 billion in their costings! They went and engaged an 'independent' set of auditors to come out and justify where this money was. Those certain independent auditors got done for breaching professional standards. That does not auger well when those opposite want to come in here and try and lecture us on financial rectitude and how to go about transparency.

While we are at it, those opposite have a little bit of a problem with their current policies. At the moment even they admit that there is about $70 billion—

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