Julia Gillard: We'll prevent bad weather by taxing people, then giving some of the money back to them. "China closing down a dirty coal-fired power generation facility at the rate of one every one to two weeks. "

Julia Gillard Meets The People | Q&A | ABC TV

AUDIENCE MEMBER: How much is the carbon tax going to be and if you do not known, why did you announce it?

JULIA GILLARD: That's a good question too and I thank you for that. Look, this is going to be a big change to our economy, a big change to the way we live. It's a necessary change because I genuinely do believe that climate change is real. It's going to cause, you know, more droughts, more bushfires, more extreme weather events. It's going to affect the barrier reef. It's going to affect food production. We've got to act.
...
TONY JONES: So why do you go on these talkback radio shows if you feel about them as you - well, these unspeakable words.

JULIA GILLARD: Because I'm not going to let people spew nonsense out into the public uncontested and Mr Jones gets on his radio show and he says things like climate change isn't real, carbon dioxide is a good thing. You know these politicians just want to price carbon so they can use the money themselves instead of talking about how we're going to assist households and, you know, people just got the radio on. They're listening to it. There's no reason for them to suspect that everything they're being told is wrong and you just can't let people do that - you know, actually try and hoodwink people - and not tell them the truth. Now, I'm going to get on there and even if it means that it's a not pretty exchange and there's a few raised voices and I've got to give back as good as I get, I'm going to get on there and I'm going to stop someone putting out that kind of nonsense uncontested.
...What we're going to do with the carbon price is we're going to put a price on carbon pollution. It will be paid by some of the biggest businesses in this country that generate carbon pollution. There's less than 1000 of them but they will pay the price. So I think there's some confusion here. People are expecting, you know, they'll go to the shops and on the docket they get from the checkout they'll see carbon tax as the last item. That's not what's going to happen. It's the big polluters that are paying the price for carbon. Now, that does have price impacts. It does feed through to things that people buy in the shops and I'm not going to pretend anything different. Because of that we will assist households. So of the money we raise by putting a price on carbon pollution, the single biggest thing we will do is we will assist households. We'll also assist businesses.
...
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Prime Minister, isn't the whole point of having a carbon tax to affect the prices that consumers pay? If there's no change in consumer behaviour, you're not going to achieve what you're trying to achieve to reduce carbon pollution. So if it's compensating households, aren't you simply undermining the effect that your tax is going to have and ultimately make no change?
...
JULIA GILLARD: Well, firstly, I'd say there will be opportunities for farmers through addressing climate change. They're often the ones who are at the forefront of the best practices for using our land and we're going to have a system where they can get a new stream of income through carbon credits through things like soil carbon, trapping carbon by better land management practices. So there's an economic opportunity there. ...There's this image that somehow we're the only ones. Simply not true. You know, China closing down a dirty coal-fired power generation facility at the rate of one every one to two weeks.