Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I think those words have a familiarity to them. It should be remembered that what the government is proposing, and has laid out in the mechanism that was made public after the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change, is a mechanism that is an emissions trading system but has a transitionary mechanism of a fixed price. Some of the issues you raised are some of the policy considerations that you have to consider when looking at the various models of abatement. It is true that some of the criticisms of a tax include whether or not the environmental outcome will be met. But in the context of this a number of things should always be remembered. The first is that the government has proposed a market mechanism—that is, an emissions trading scheme. We propose also, after dialogue with the multiparty committee, an interim transitionary period of a fixed price. That is true.

It should also be remembered that Mr Abbott himself has advocated for a carbon tax. It is interesting—