Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister agree with himself when he said: 'The National Energy Guarantee achieves lower electricity prices.'?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The misrepresentation of the National Energy Guarantee as being some measure that the opposition has somehow taken from the coalition, I think, is deeply misleading to the Australian people. I will tell you why. In the proposal that was considered by the government, the emissions reduction target was 26 per cent; it wasn't 45 per cent. The Labor Party cannot use the National Energy Guarantee as some sort of Trojan horse to legislate a 45 per cent emissions reduction target. The Australian public should not be fooled by this lie, because it is a very tricky and shifty lie from the Leader of the Opposition—very tricky and very shifty.

A 45 per cent emissions reduction target will turbocharge electricity prices higher. That will hit pensioners, it will hit families, it will hit small businesses, it will hit the agricultural industry, it will hit the smelting industry and it will hit businesses and regions all across the country. If you're interested in taking electricity prices down, you do not have reckless targets when it comes to managing your emissions. We have a sensible target; it's 26 per cent. We're committed to it and we will continue to meet it. We will have met Kyoto 1. We will meet Kyoto 2 and we will ensure we meet the Paris reductions as well by 2030.

We have sensible targets. The Labor Party has a reckless target, and, as we heard from the member for Isaacs, it is quite possible that that will include a carbon tax from the Labor Party. They refuse to rule it out. They've ruled it out in the past; they've ruled it in in the past. They've done it, and we were the ones who had to get rid of it. A 45 per cent emissions reduction target is a job-destroying, economy-destroying tax on electricity which will undermine the strength of our economy. This is important, because it's the strength of our economy which delivers hospitals. It's the strength of our economy that delivers schools and affordable medicines—affordable medicines that when Labor were in power they could not fund because they could not manage money and they could not fund a budget. In next year's budget, the first surplus budget in 12 years, our budget will fund those medicines. It will fund hospitals, it will fund schools, and it will do so without higher taxes and without reckless targets that only undermine our economy.