Ten years ago last Tuesday, my friend Bob Carr opened the Visy plant at Tumut.
It was Visy's first big venture into clean energy based on the sustainable re-use of manufacturing by-products.
Today we welcome the second.
Across that decade, Visy's commitment has remained unchanged.
What has changed, however, is the absence of a great Australia, Richard Pratt, and today we remember him with affection and respect.
There is much of Richard's spirit in this plant.
His sense of the future.
His sense of uniting environmental imperatives with commercial opportunities.
His sense of his family and his company as good corporate citizens.
And all those things remain true today.
Friends, I often speak of a clean energy future and I know it can sound like an abstraction sometimes.
But I would simply say to the critics and the sceptics: Come to Coolaroo and see for yourselves.
This is what the clean energy future looks like.
The intelligent application of technology to the challenges facing our planet.
Achieved in a way that fosters investment, profits and jobs.
That's why I say I'm an optimist about our nation's ability to embrace a clean energy future.
Because the signs are here already.
At Coolaroo and Tumut.
At the geothermal facility I saw in the streets of suburban Brunswick.
The new solar energy facility in Newcastle.
The wind farm that Crown Prince Frederick inspected yesterday at Macarthur - the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
The new gas-fired power stations set to go up in Queensland.
All of these projects are a down-payment on the clean energy future we can build together as a nation.
Yes today projects like Coolaroo are the exception.
In a clean energy future, they will become the norm.
They will be places of opportunity for Australians.
Our tradies and engineers will find work on such projects.
Our kids will learn about them at uni and TAFE.
Our whole economy will be re-tooled as we see $100 billion invested in clean energy over the next 40 years.
I'm hugely optimistic about that future.
It means innovation.
It means investment
It means jobs - high skill, high wage jobs for our regions as well as our cities.
Above all, it means keeping our planet safe and clean for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.
With the carbon price, we're embarking on a great journey together as a nation.
A transformational journey.
A reform as big as any we've seen in the postwar era.
Such decisions are never easy at the time.
But who would have it any other way?
Who want anything less than a government taking the big decisions for a nation's future ensuring we land on the right side of history.
That's what we've done.
Now that the work of legislation is complete, the work of our business sector begins.
Because it is your ingenuity that will make our carbon future a reality.
That's why we chose a market mechanism.
And indeed only yesterday the OECD released a new report which is the latest piece of expert advice calling for action to reduce carbon pollution to avoid dangerous climate change.
Importantly the OECD confirms that putting a price on carbon is the most effective policy because it creates dynamic incentives for investment in cleaner technologies and infrastructure.
The ‘hidden hand' of the market made us prosperous in the three centuries since the Industrial Revolution began.
The same ‘hidden hand' will help us overcome the unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution that take the form of climate change.
Firms like Visy are already on the way.
Others will come to learn that acting on carbon is not a drawback but an opportunity.
I'm confident about this because we are a creative and adaptable nation.
Australians can do great things.
We've done them before - we can do them again.
This facility is proof.
I welcome it.
I look forward to seeing more of the same across our great nation.
And I take pride in declaring the Visy clean energy plant officially open.