Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think that just reiterates and reconfirms what I have been saying for the last two minutes—that the opposition are extremely irrelevant, are totally unprepared, provide no research and knowledge in this debate, but they do provide an alternative policy. Senator Fifield, I wonder if you had enough stamina to stand up at the forum that you were in last year and explain to those small businesses that in fact your policy position was that you wanted the same outcome that we want in terms of climate change. You have the same target and period of time—five per cent by 2020. But did you actually tell those small businesses that they would be paying a higher cost than they are now, that the consumers that walked through the door and bought product would be whacked with $1,300 a year in their household budget?

At the end of the day, what you do not tell the Australian people and do not front up to and are not honest about is that not only do you want the same target in the same yearly outcome that we do but you going to do it so vastly differently that you will take from families and give that money to the big polluters in this country. You are entirely disingenuous when you talk about repealing this legislation. You are entirely disingenuous when you talk about the impact this is going to have on families and households. Perhaps Mr Windsor in the other chamber was absolutely honest and correct last week when he admitted that members of your party, Senator Fifield, came crawling to him begging to form a government, saying they would do anything whatsoever.

Senator Fifield interjecting—

You see at the end of the day Mr Windsor did not believe you would be honest enough. He did not put any trust in you and wanted to ensure that this country was going to be governed by a government that he could trust and work with. So a condition of his forming government was that he wanted to see climate change tackled through a price on carbon, then a move to a trading emissions scheme.

What you are on the other side is unprepared, unresearched and uninformed about what is in this debate. Your lines will continue despite the fact that people are now living with this on a day-to-day basis. Families are being compensated for their needs in terms of what is happening with the carbon pricing regime. What you also rely on is the front pages of the newspapers to write your questions each day for question time. (Time expired)