Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for the Environment) (15:25): I am delighted to take head-on the party that produced pink batts, green loans, cash for clunkers, a citizens assembly and a carbon tax that not one member opposite would support today. We gave them the chance in the House of Representatives, the Parliament of Australia, to support their own carbon tax, and not one member had the gumption, the courage or the honesty to admit that it is something they support. If it was such a fabulous success, isn't there just one brave soul, one little soldier willing to put up their hand? If it was such a success, why isn't there one of you? What do we know? We know that it came at a cost of $15.4 billion and that in a best-case scenario, for $15.4 billion, they might have seen 12 million tonnes reduce at an average cost of $1,300 per tonne of abatement. So what does this mean? It means that Australians were paying higher electricity prices, with electricity up by 10 per cent, and higher gas prices. When we repealed the carbon tax, we took away two years of a $15.4 billion tax hit. Do you know what it came with? They like to talk about payments. It came with a $5½ billion gift to brown coal generators. Is there one of you opposite who will say that you think that is a good idea, giving $5½ billion to the very people that you demonised? When we came in, we abolished that gift and we abolished the tax and we reduced emissions through the Emissions Reduction Fund and we reduced the cost of electricity and we reduced the cost of gas and the cost of refrigerants. That is the reality of this debate. We are doing it with an approach of a reverse auction, which has its antecedents in the reverse auctions that we see in Brazil and in South Africa and the ACT. The World Bank have recently, shock horror, adopted a pilot auction facility almost identical to our Emissions Reduction Fund. Of all the systems in the world that they could have adopted, the World Bank have adopted a reverse auction mechanism for payment on delivery of emissions reduction to those who would put up projects under the clean development mechanism. In reality, they have adopted an emissions reduction fund of $100 million, paid for by the United States, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland using a mechanism almost identical to the one here, that is operating and working at reducing emissions in Australia. So what happens if the ALP gets its way? What does it mean for the Australian people? I know I am not allowed to lift above the table this headline, but it is entitled 'The report Shorten did not want you to see: ALP $600 billion carbon bill'. Mr Whiteley: How much? Mr HUNT: $600 billion! Power bills up 78 per cent, thousands of jobs lost, economic growth shattered—that is their policy in a nutshell, using their own modelling from their own Treasury at the very time they were in government. This was not our modelling; this was their modelling of their policy of their time in government. So if they come back, electricity prices go up, gas prices go up, they fail to reduce emissions in any significant way and what they do do comes at an enormous cost. It is symbolism over real emissions reduction. It is phoney environmentalism. It is faux environmentalism. It is about an approach which does not work, which increases electricity prices and which fits within the grand tradition of pink batts, green loans, a citizens assembly, cash for clunkers and a carbon tax that not one member opposite would support today. The great policy that they seem to champion does not have a single supporter, someone with the gumption to put their hand up. But we know that is what their plan is, because the shadow cabinet proposal was leaked. What is their other policy? Their other policy is a 50 per cent renewable energy target. What was it that the member for Hunter said though when interviewed only recently on 26 July? He said, 'It's not a policy; it's an aspiration.' Today it was a policy, apparently. If it is a policy, let's see their costings. When asked how much it would cost, what did the member for Hunter say? 'No-one knows—that's the truth of it.' The member for Hunter can be a truth teller from time to time. He was truthful that no-one in the ALP knew. They had not done the work. They had made a statement. He thinks this is an aspiration. Do you know what? The environment department did calculate what that would cost, because we were interested if we were going to introduce such a policy. What was their figure? $85 billion—that is the cost of the policy. Mr Butler interjecting— Mr HUNT: Of course it is going to cost that. That is not in dispute. It is well within the bounds of the modelling that was also put out by Deloittes. We find that they had a carbon tax that no-one will support. They had a pink batts program of which they are rightly utterly ashamed. They had a green loans program, which was a catastrophe, and cash for clunkers and a citizens assembly that could not get off the ground, and they want to give us environmental advice. These people were not just phoney or faux environmentalists; they were environmental wreckers and a disaster. When we came into office, we inherited the Great Barrier Reef on the World Heritage watch list and on track to be declared endangered. Do you know what the World Heritage Committee did? They took it away from the risk of endangerment. They took it off the watch list. They returned it to the full highest level, and the chair of the World Heritage Committee said in front of the world that, because of our response, Australia was a global role model. That is what this government has done: the Reef, we have reduced emissions— Mr Butler: Thanks to Annastacia. Mr HUNT: They have not even passed their legislation yet after all of this time. We have declared that dredge disposal in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has gone forever and we have put it in law. They are the things that we are doing. Let me also turn to the Emissions Reduction Fund, because we have seen the reality that emissions are being reduced with a system that is being increasingly adopted around the world and by no less than the World Bank. It might be a little bit embarrassing for you to look at the World Bank's pilot auction facility—a system almost identical to the one we have adopted here in Australia. You know what? We have seen 47 million tonnes of emissions reduction at a cost of $13.95 per tonne, 144 projects right across Australia—real emissions reduction as verified by the Clean Energy Regulator, using the same methods and the same basis under the Carbon Farming Initiative which the ALP legislated. We used their model and their system, and the parliamentary secretary for the ALP demanded during the debate that we fund these very same projects through the CFI using the $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund. It was your parliamentary secretary who demanded these projects be funded—it is there on the record. Let me just deal with one other thing here, because I think it is important: the Prime Minister was asked about the comments of a particular firm, RepuTex, today. I would note this and I suspect they are right: they predicted that the Emissions Reduction Fund would achieve up to nine million tonnes of reductions in its first auction. In fact, we achieved more than 500 per cent of that outcome with 47 million tonnes—up to nine million tonnes or more than 500 per cent was the reality of 47 million tonnes. A year ago they said we would have a gap to fill of 300 million tonnes on top of the Emissions Reduction Fund between now and 2020. In an article on 12 June, they said Australia was now miraculously a year later highly likely to achieve our 2020 targets. On that occasion they were right: within a year they discovered that a 300 million tonne gap has evaporated. We are going to achieve our targets. We are doing it on track. Their predictions were out by a factor of 500 per cent, and that is who you want to rely on? You guys are geniuses. You guys are absolute Einsteins. Honestly: pink batts and green loans—who is proud of them? Who is proud of the carbon tax? Because I can tell you: we are proud of having repealed it. We are proud of the Emissions Reduction Fund. The Prime Minister is proud of the fact that we are on track to achieve our targets in Australia, have ambitious international targets and reduce emissions in this country in a way which does not increase electricity prices for Australian families.