Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yeah, righto. Anyway, to talk again of the Rudd government, in the 42nd Parliament Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of the time, introduced funding for solar projects and asked for submissions from all around Australia. I know there were some very good submissions put in from Western Australia that were actually commercially viable. But guess what: the five projects that were awarded funds were all in Queensland. And guess where the Prime Minister's seat was: in Queensland. So none of them went to Western Australia at all. This is another example of the Labor-Greens alliance working against the Western Australian economy, including by keeping this carbon tax. You said I would bring it up and I did; I have brought the carbon tax up. So this is another perfect example of how the Greens-Labor alliance works against Western Australia.

In 2011 I went on the ASEAN delegation, and in that time we went to Singapore. We had the previous member for Braddon there. We also had the previous member for beef stroganoff—sorry, the previous member for Reid. We met with the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, and these two members spoke to the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and said, 'What do you think about investing in renewable energy programs and things like that?' The Singaporean government official just said, 'We will not invest in non-sustainable projects, so we have not invested in any renewable energy targets at all.' So there is a perfect example of a sensible government leaving it to industry to drive that part of the sector.

Of course, this bill was part of the carbon tax repeal bills, and I mention that just for the member for Melbourne. This bill sits within that context. I support the bill. However, in one moment the Labor Party chose to make the parliament's focus the introduction of a carbon tax without any mandate—in fact, with a mandate not to introduce a carbon tax—and with it other possibilities were extinguished.

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