Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Corangamite for his question. Australia's economy, with the introduction of the carbon price—after 150 days of its operation—is still growing. We still have low unemployment. We still have strong business investment. We have low inflation, and we have much lower interest rates than when the coalition was in government. Those are the facts, and they do not accord that well with the fear campaign that the Leader of the Opposition conducted month after month after month in a cowardly performance to try and terrify people into supporting the coalition.

The point that my colleague the Minister for Trade made earlier—about having an opposition leader, after all that fear and all that mendacity, less popular than the carbon price, which was supposed to destroy towns and regions—was quite telling. Remember his claim that it would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs? In fact, the figures show—

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