Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I add my deep and personal congratulations; you deserve this honour. The member for Swan comes to this place as a tradie with real-world experience. In fact, he was an electrician, so he understands the value of electricity and its impact on individual lives when electricity costs skyrocket. Against that background, I thank him for this question, because he represents both a concern for the cost of living and a concern for the environment, and that is what we bring in the policy which we have framed today.

We have announced an emissions target for Australia of minus 26 to 28 per cent from 2005 to 2030. That puts us ahead of Japan, at minus 25 per cent; ahead of Korea, at minus four per cent; ahead of China, at plus 150 per cent; and comparable with the United States, at minus 26 to 28 per cent, and New Zealand and Canada.

But how are we getting there? We have an Emissions Reduction Fund which produced four times the reductions—and I want those opposite to understand this—in just the first auction, at a fraction of the cost (approximately one per cent of the cost per tonne of abatement), than Labor produced during the entire carbon tax experiment. So we have a system which will allow us to achieve our goal, which will do the right thing by the world, but which will not drive up electricity prices.

I am asked whether there are any alternative proposals, and there are. The Labor Party, in the last few weeks, has told us about an alternative proposal—

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