Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

What is very obvious to anyone who is dispassionate and without an ideological bent—unlike the Democrats or the Labor Party—is to say that the last thing this country needs, if we want to address climate change, is a new tax. We actually need to invest billions of dollars in the world—ultimately trillions of dollars—in a range of technologies. That is going to mean a whole range of technologies. If you say you have an ideological bent against capturing carbon and buying it under the ground, if you have an ideological bent against the coal industry, you are part of the problem; you are not part of the solution. The last thing you need is a carbon price that drives up taxes on energy. We need a healthy, growing economy with full employment which gives the government and the private sector the wherewithal to invest in the technologies, be they renewables, in solar—where Australia leads the world—or in geothermal, using energy from under the ground. We need to make sure that we have a modern approach to our role in the nuclear fuel cycle. Let us take the ideology out of this and get on with some practical solutions.