Today is the day that the Labor Party’s climate change policy comes to fruition and into legislation. They took this policy to the Australian people, a policy that included not one but two key targets. The first target was a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. The second target was a reduction in household power bills of $275. It was based on this climate policy that the new government came to power, looking the Australian people in the eye and promising them that they would not only reduce emissions more than the former coalition government but also reduce power prices more than the coalition government—the coalition government, by the way, that achieved an extraordinary performance on both counts; a coalition government that saw emissions reduce by over 20 per cent on 2005 levels and a coalition that ensured that power prices came down by 10 per cent over the last term of government, with power prices coming down for both households and businesses. But the Labor Party went to the Australian people and they said to them, ‘We can do better.’ Not only did they promise to get emissions down further; they also promised that prices would come down further. They are failing on that promise.
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