Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There have been billions and billions of dollars of investment in the Gladstone area, and that was only one of the regions destined to be wiped out. We were also going to see the death of the coal industry, the death of the steel industry and the death of manufacturing, and yet in those hundred days so oft referred to we have seen an additional 9,000 jobs created in the manufacturing industry. Huge price increases were anticipated, enormous price increases, but not according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. The price of electricity was going to go through the roof, but if you peel some of the layers off the onion and look more closely at the issue and take, for example, Western Australia, where electricity prices have gone up considerably—in fact, I have heard some quotes, and I am not sure whether they are correct, that it is by as much as 60 per cent in some areas—only nine per cent of that could ever have been attributed to the carbon price.

So here we are, back again in this place, with the pathetic fear campaign of those opposite now blaming the carbon price for any issues that maybe impacting on housing in Australia. It is very sad. According to the honourable fellow opposite, the loud one, he was saying—