Page 4920 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
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Mr Seselja interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, order please!
MR CORBELL: that Mr Seselja can avoid the inevitability that, whether it is 30 or 40 per cent, it must have a significant contribution from renewable energy sources. And that is the issue that the Liberal Party clearly have failed to come to grips with.
A Labor government is clearly and deeply conscious of the impact of any policy measure on low income earners. For that reason, the government will continue to adopt measures that assist those low income earners and other disadvantaged persons in the community who can be disproportionately impacted by a policy measure that overall is in the public interest. That has been the approach of Labor governments for many decades. Hard reforms have to be made for the good of the nation, for the good of the community. Whether it was tariff reform, whether it was other economic reform, those reforms had impacts. But even if they had impacts, and they did, measures were put in place to assist those who were disproportionately affected by those impacts to make the transition and to be protected from the detrimental impacts that would otherwise accrue to them.
That is the way you manage these issues. That is the way you address them. You do not run away from difficult reform. You do not pretend, like the Liberal Party does, that “all is sweet and rosy if you take our path”. The Labor Party understands the challenges of these reforms and the Labor Party will always act to protect the interests of low income earners and to assist them through this process. That is why we have already changed the concession regime for low income earners when it comes to utility costs, why we have indexed it to CPI and why it is the most generous scheme in the country. It is because we understand and we will always work to protect those individuals in our society. But at the same time we will not shy away from the importance of these reforms and we will not shy away from making the transition to a low-carbon future.
Mr Seselja likes to walk both sides of the street. He likes to claim that he believes in energy efficiency, he believes in climate change, but he also believes that there should not be any costs associated with making the transition. That, clearly, is fantasy land when it comes to Mr Seselja.
This amendment is all about the Liberal Party’s big policy fraud on the Canberra community. But I think the Canberra community are better than that, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Mr Smyth: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, under standing order 62, I seek your ruling on tedious repetition from the minister. We have now had two doses of this. He circles around constantly trying to make a point which he is not doing very effectively, but it is tedious and it is repetitious, and I seek your ruling.
MR CORBELL: Well, you don’t like it; that is your problem.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Corbell, can you get to your point, please?
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