Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Finance and Deregulation) (14:41): The government has made very clear its view about the importance of pricing pollution, and the reason we want to price pollution is so we start reducing it, because—and this is pretty intuitive—as long as something is free, it will keep occurring. And as long as polluting is free, businesses— Opposition senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Senator Wong, resume your seat. Senator Wong, continue. Senator WONG: The reason we want to price pollution is that, unless we put a price on it, we will keep polluting. The whole point of pricing pollution is to give an incentive to pollute less, to invest in clean energy and to tackle climate change. It is true that we have to work through how you transition a very highly carbon-intensive economy like Australia to a low-polluting economy. As we have taken this policy forward, the Australian people will have seen that we have been very focused on how we do this efficiently, effectively and at lowest cost.