Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I have given you my answer. What I said to Senator Milne, through you, Mr President, is that the government believes, on the basis of the advice provided to its task group on emissions-trading, that a properly constructed, well-planned emissions-trading scheme with a cap and trade scheme, with the appropriate issue of permits and a market for the price of those permits, will bring forward the energy responses required, whether it be renewable or nuclear. The Greens and the Labor Party will not have a bar of nuclear power, claiming, ‘We’re pure on greenhouse, but we mustn’t have nuclear power.’ How utterly absurd and hypocritical! We believe that those energy responses will be brought forward by the operation of a properly planned market based emissions-trading scheme.