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

I particularly want to thank the member for Petrie, who is a great advocate for the Green Army. He is overseeing three projects in his electorate, and he is proud of the work of these young Australians. He is hands-on, he visits the sites, he is a wonderful environmentalist and he actually cares about what occurs on the ground. The other thing that the member for Petrie did was he voted to repeal the carbon tax, and he voted for lower electricity prices and he voted for lower gas prices. One thing which happened over recent weeks was that the ACCC confirmed that the $550 which we said would come with the repeal of the carbon tax on average did come to Australian families. We said we would repeal the carbon tax and deliver that benefit; we did repeal it and the ACCC has confirmed that that benefit has flowed through.

There is a question as to whether or not there are any threats to these reductions in electricity and gas and refrigerant prices—and there is a threat. I have to say this: in looking at this threat we had a moment of truth from the member for Hunter, and I shall keep going back to that over coming weeks, because he was asked whether the policy of those on that side was a tax. What did he say? He said you can call it a tax—he did not say it once or twice; he said it three times. He went on to say, when asked about the cost, that no-one knows. No-one knows, they say. However, on that occasion he may not have been entirely accurate, because we know. What did we see this week? 'ALP's $600 billion carbon bill.' There he is, a $600 billion carbon bill—

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