Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, the opposition's lack of transparency has followed them right into opposition and into this question time. They failed to nail the government at all when they raised these issues, because we have been very fair and transparent in our commitments to the Australian people. But if we look even at how the opposition asked their questions today, when Senator Cadell said to Senator Wong, 'I refer to your secret modelling that demonstrates that there will be coalmining closures as a result of your policies', then lo and behold, what do we find? Those very coalmines were forecast to close and their closure announced under the last government. So, far from being attributable to the Labor Party's policy commitments and indeed the commitments we have made to the Australian people, those job losses were forecast under the opposition's policy settings from when they were in government—the opposition's complete lack, frankly, of policy settings, as we've heard many times in this place. We saw under the last government some 22 energy policies in the time they were in government.

When we talk about our commitment to preventing job losses on the road to net zero we're serious about it. That's why we do this modelling—so we can see the impact of our policies on local employment markets and so we can work out where to stimulate in order to mitigate any changes in those local job markets in order to prevent those job losses. We've also had from those opposite today a debate about cost of living. Well, one of the key contributors to cost of living in this nation has of course been electricity prices, gas prices, things you didn't do anything about in your absolute lack of policy clarity on those questions—again, a mess that we in government are now left to clean up.

Those opposite like to lambaste us for our reduction target for emissions, and we've talked about the Hunter and other coalmining precincts. Well, we're proud to be a government that is currently working with the government of New South Wales, a Liberal government. They have a reduction target to get to a 50 per cent reduction by 2030. Are you blaming them for this landscape? Are you making accusations of them that attributes job losses to them? Well, no, because we know that these reduction policies are both good for our environment and good for the economy. They're not easy transitions to make. They have complex adjustments for economies and communities that we need to be smart and organised about. But the economic modelling and indeed the historical record, when you look at things like the short time that we had the carbon reduction scheme in place, or if you look at the success of existing renewable energy technologies that are widely used in Australia and their costings, demonstrate that our modelling and our commitments absolutely stack up.

We are a government that wants to look after workers, because we care about the cost of living. We are here today in this chamber spending most of the day debating industrial relations laws that will empower workers and workplaces to work with their employers to improve productivity and increase wages and conditions where they're deserved.