Mr CREAN (Hotham—Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government and Minister for the Arts) (14:58): That was a struggle if ever I have heard one, from the bumbling Leader of the National Party, who claims credit and representation in terms of regional Australia. They have not asked a question on the subject in this parliament, and when they were in government they said there was no constitutional role for the Commonwealth when it comes to regional development. If the National Party do not stand for regional development, what do they stand for? They are a disgrace, and yet we have got this MPI led by the faltering leader who now looks after that once proud party. But it is a rump, because it is a branch office of the Liberal Party. Let me just deal with the issue we are debating here today. We are not just debating the question of the price of carbon and the impact that is having on the Australian economy. What we should be debating is that we are an economy in transition and we are being confronted by many challenges. Putting a price on carbon is one of the solutions to facing up to those challenges, but there are many challenges, including the high Australian dollar, the fluctuating commodity prices and the devastation wrought by the floods. This is what economies have to face up to. That is what leadership is about, and you can either treat those challenges as opportunities or treat them as threats. We on this side of the House see the opportunities; on that side of the House they only see them as threats. They go around preaching gloom and doom; they go around with a fear campaign. They have never come forward with a constructive thought in their life. This is not the first time we have had to face up to challenges. The last time we did, it was also a Labor government that rose to the charge—a Labor government that understood in the eighties that what was needed for this economy to come through was to embrace an economy that needed to restructure itself, an economy that needed to open itself up to the rest of the world and an economy that recognised that it is such a small market that you simply cannot produce for your own market. We had to engage the world, and to do that we had to become competitive. That is why we floated the dollar, that is why we cut tariffs, that is why we opened up to foreign bank entry and that is why we undertook the hard decisions. And what did that achieve, because we were prepared to face up to the hard decisions? It achieved the circumstances— Mr Frydenberg interjecting— Mr Laming interjecting— Mr CREAN: Mr Speaker, if you are prepared to bring them to order— The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Kooyong and the member for Bowman! Mr CREAN: What it achieved was that Australia was the only developed economy in the world to have avoided the recession. We did it because we faced up to the hard challenges then and we are facing up to the hard challenges now. On the question of carbon pricing, I had the opportunity over the course of the break that we have just come back from to visit much of regional Australia. On the question of carbon pricing, I conducted forums in at least 10 communities and invited the stakeholders— An honourable member: And they loved it! Mr CREAN: They did love it because they had a government that was prepared to engage them. These were local governments, these were regional development bodies and these were community action groups that knew they had to face up to this challenge. The common theme for all of these regional development forums was that they knew they had to face up to two fundamental challenges. The first was the recognition that they had to diversify their economic base. They looked around and saw the regions which had diversified their economic base and they were the ones that were succeeding. The ones that had the narrow base, the ones that were reliant on one industry alone, were the vulnerable ones. Think about Cairns, built around tourism. The dollar is hurting them, just as much as it is hurting manufacturers. But look at Townsville, just down the track, which has a diversified economic base, and it is not suffering the same level of high unemployment. That is the difference: economies that have embraced economic diversification. The second key ingredient that all these communities were embracing was the need to face up to a cleaner energy future. They express it in different ways: they want a cleaner environment in which their kids and grandchildren can grow up and they want to leave a legacy for them in the future; they want liveability; and they see opportunities—opportunities in green jobs and opportunities in terms of renewable energy options—and they were embracing them. Mr Chester: You cut 11 million bucks out of Landcare! Mr CREAN: As to the member who interjects, the member for Gippsland, I attended his electorate and the forum there had a raft of initiatives that his community has embraced. Monash University, through ClimateWorks, is working on a low-carbon action plan. Six Gippsland local government authorities are working on projects focused on promoting energy efficiency. The Gippsland Trades and Labour Council and the Gippsland TAFE are looking at identifying skills needs in terms of the clean energy future. Also, the RMIT and Monash University are working on regional partners to establish a set of sustainable technologies. Mr Chester interjecting— Mr CREAN: The member for Gippsland interjects. If he wants to ridicule what his local community leadership stands for, let him get up and honestly state that in this House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Order! The minister will resume his seat. Does the member for Gippsland have a point of order? Mr Chester: No. Will the minister take a question? The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. There is no point of order. The member for Gippsland will resume his seat or I will deal with him. The minister has the call. Mr CREAN: Not only is the member for Gippsland out of touch with his own community but he does not have a clue about parliamentary procedures. Why doesn't he go off to a training program, actually learn something and engage with his community? I was also in Whyalla. I mention Whyalla because the Leader of the Opposition went there to give them the rosy news that they were going to be wiped off the face of the earth when the climate change package came in, and yet when we went there we were shown opportunities in terms of solar, rare earths and a green-grid strategy in which they were committed to finding an additional 1,300 jobs if those projects come off. That is hardly wiping them off the map; that is expanding their economic footprint on the map. As far as the Leader of the Opposition is concerned—talking about local government having their prices and things put up—I also went to Wagga during the break and announced an initiative with the Wagga council where, in conjunction with the Low Carbon Australia initiative, they were funding, with up-front, low-interest loans, initiatives to lower the energy footprint of the council. That is a council that sees the need to keep the energy costs down because, if they do not, it will transfer into higher rate bases. They are working with initiatives that the government is funding to help them lower that footprint. They know it, they get it and they are doing it. The only people who do not get it in this chamber are those who sit opposite. When it comes to the carbon pricing initiative we have got bipartisan support in this chamber for what we are trying to achieve. You would not believe it from the misrepresentations, untruths and fear that get spouted from the other side, but both major political parties have a commitment to lowering greenhouse emissions by five per cent by the year 2020. In other words, we agree on the what. The difference is we disagree on the how. The proposal that has been put forward from the other side has been ridiculed by any objective observer that you ask because it is costly, because it does not work and because it actually puts a huge cost on households. In fact, as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency indicated the other day, it is a cost per household of $1,300 a year. Yet they are talking to us about cost-of-living pressures. Before the last election the member for Goldstein was saying that the opposition's proposal, which it does not even talk about these days, would take Hazelwood in Victoria out of the equation. However, when the Leader of the Opposition went down there and confronted the Latrobe Valley workers he said, 'Oh no, we're not closing Hazelwood.' So how are they going to implement the policy that they turn against as soon as they come to another audience? The Leader of the Opposition is the chameleon of Australian politics. With every audience he speaks to he changes his spots and he changes his language. He says what he thinks they want to hear but none of it is consistent. He is caught out on climate change wherever he goes. We are committed to achieving that five per cent reduction and we have the package of measures that will help us do it. That is why all of those community forums I have talked about have engaged in the discussion, because they have wanted to hear the package of measures that we have available to help them do it. This is also an interesting contrast because when the former Kennett government in Victoria privatised the Victorian electricity industry it had no assistance package to help people make the transition. The Liberal Party does not believe in assistance packages. It is even worse, because the other day when the current Premier of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, put out that shonky report to show that our package would cost jobs, when in fact the analysis even indicated there would be an increase in jobs, he ignored the assistance package that we had put in place. The Liberal Party does not believe in assistance packages and when we announce ours it wants to ignore it. What sort of honesty is that, Mr Speaker? What sort of commitment to leadership is it that they would have you believe that they could give? What sort of leadership is it where, in the face of all these massive challenges to us as an economy in transition, having to make the structural changes and face up to the important challenges, its view is that you do it on your own. That is not the Labor view, Mr Speaker, and it never has been. Our view is that we are better off understanding the challenges ahead of us and seeing them as opportunities but developing the assistance packages that are going to help us get there. One of the other important things that comes from this package—and I would have thought this was important to the National Party because it affects farmers—is that farmers can be the big winners out of this climate change package because the tax does not apply to them in the first place. In other words, they do not pay it. The second thing is that they get the benefit in two ways. They get the benefit because we have significant assistance for them on carbon farming, which is not replacing other farm activities but enhancing them. In its simplest form—and I saw this down at Mount Gambier when I was there a couple of weeks ago—it is biological farming to enrich light, sandy soil by trapping the carbon in the soil. This makes that soil more resilient, particularly in drought. It retains water better and it holds more nutrients. In other words, it lifts the productivity of the industry base that is agriculture. And if that can be measured, and we believe it can, they can also trade it. That is what a market is. The greatest irony in this debate is that when it comes to creative solutions to the challenge of climate change it is the Labor Party that is advocating the market and it is the Liberal Party that is advocating direct intervention. Robert Menzies would be turning in his grave today if he were listening to this rabble advocating its approach. The market works because the market rewards better behaviour. It rewards cleaner energy options. It rewards cleaner fuels over dirtier fuels. This is where Australia can play at its strengths, but it will not realise those strengths unless it has a market that reflects those comparisons. It is for that reason that Australia has to take an important lead in influencing the shape of that market, a market that reflects good behaviour, smarter practices in agriculture and cleaner energy options over dirtier energy options. That is how we should be doing this. When I was Minister for Trade those who sat on the other side were always saying, 'Do your best, Minister, in terms of opening the markets.' Here we have the opportunity to have an influence in the newest market of the lot and they are saying: 'Ignore it. We don't want more markets. We don't want open markets. We want to turn on our own traditions because we want to run a grubby, negative fear campaign. We haven't got any ideas. Our way back to office is to run the fear campaign, play to all the people's worst prejudices, play to their fears, and rather than give hope and opportunity, give them fear.' We are the party of opportunity and we will succeed.