Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

For the past seven weeks the opposition has been trying to get a straight answer out of the Prime Minister on the subject of jobs. We have asked question after question on the effect of his policies on jobs, and all we get is blather, waffle and words, words, words—most of them referring to redundancy. That seems to be his fixation. I can give just one example. On Thursday, 12 March the shadow Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, asked the Prime Minister about the impact, the jobs consequences, of the so-called stimulus packages. The Prime Minister’s answer was:

One of the things that working families are interested in right now is the protection of their redundancy arrangements.

One of the things working families are interested in the most is remaining working families. The Prime Minister seems to be determined to make them redundancy families. He has so incompetently assembled his economic policies that he is deliberately putting Australians out of work at a time when we face real economic challenges. When we need a government that supports the economy, supporting employment, he is putting Australians out of work.

Yesterday we raised with him the very concrete example of Xstrata, one of Australia’s largest mining companies. It has said that, if the Rudd emissions trading scheme is enacted into law, it will close three or four mines, approximately 1,000 jobs will be lost right now, future investment of up to $7 billion will be cancelled and 4,000 future jobs will no longer be established. That is the evidence from Xstrata, one of the largest mining companies in the world, one of the largest employers in the mining industry in Australia. We put this to the Prime Minister and he waffled as usual. Words, words, words—endless words but no understanding of his own scheme. What he said was that Xstrata would be compensated as an emissions-intensive trade-exposed sector. But, in fact, the coal mining industry has been left out; instead, they have to scrabble for a bit of random compensation out of a fund. They are not going to be given free permits, as other elements in the emissions-intensive trade-exposed sector will be.

So we have the Prime Minister with an emissions trading scheme which is going to put Australians out of work—we have the word of this large employer saying the Prime Minister’s policy will put thousands of Australians out of work. We raise it with him in the parliament, and he does not even understand his own scheme. He cannot even explain the consequences of his own scheme. He does not know the damage he is doing, because he does not understand the scheme he is demanding that everybody sign up to. It is bad enough asking us to sign up to it sight unseen, but it is sight unseen by him too. Who has read it? Senator Wong, perhaps—nobody else, that is for sure.

Today, we raised another concrete example—a company called Envirogen, which is in the business of creating renewable energy from the burning of waste coalmine gas. At the moment, it gets compensation under the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. Under that scheme, it gets financial incentives in the form of NGACs. That scheme will come to an end with the beginning of the Rudd emissions trading scheme, but, as Envirogen writes to us:

The CPRS, as proposed … does not reward generation initiatives for waste coal mine gas. Therefore, the coal mines will move to reduce their permit cost by flaring the waste gas—

in other words, by creating more emissions. They go on:

This is the least cost option from the coal mines perspective and consequently, the coal mines will not share the savings in permit costs beyond the value of flaring.

What is going to happen? More emissions, a current investment of $455 million and a hundred jobs at risk as well as new investment of $345 million and more than 300 new jobs at risk. There is a concrete case—a practical example—of the problems of a poorly designed emissions trading scheme.

I asked the Prime Minister about this in question time today, and all he could offer us was a meaningless, rambling lecture on consistency. Indeed, consistency is a major problem—he has as much difficulty with being consistent as he does with being relevant. Let us not forget that this is a man who said, when he was trying to get elected—and successfully getting elected in 2007—that he was an economic conservative. On the other hand, when he was trying to become leader of the Labor Party, he said he was an old-fashioned Christian socialist. And then, at the end of 2006, shortly after he had become leader of the Labor Party, he said to the Agewhich announced this almost in mourning and almost with a black border around the front page—‘I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist.’ The readers were obviously very upset to read that! Now, of course, he has got a new guise. The Christian socialist who then ceased to be a socialist and became an economic conservative to get elected has now become a social democrat, based on his latest essay in the Monthly magazine!

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