Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Deregulation, Competition Policy and Sustainable Cities) Share this | Hansard source

My contribution tonight tries to put a spotlight on what actually is going on. Speaker after speaker from the Rudd Labor government side have tried to create a false argument that there is some contest over the need for action. That is nonsense. There is no lack of will or want to take action from the coalition parties. What is at debate here is whether the action is wise, whether it is thoughtful, whether it is effective and whether it will bring about the outcomes we are seeking to achieve. My parliamentary colleague the member for Isaacs has been recorded as saying, ‘Support the CPRS and sea levels will drop.’ I give him the benefit of the doubt that there was a little dose of hyperbole at the doorstop, but we need to look at the statements that are being made by my parliamentary colleague the member for Isaacs and Labor members in this place just to see what substance sits behind them. There has been no effort whatsoever to engage on the specific policy details about the excellent plan that Tony Abbott and our team announced today. There has been no willingness to consider the endorsements and the encouragement from industry group after industry group that have been resulting from this excellent, constructive and costed plan. There has been no acknowledgement from the Rudd Labor government and their ministers and those that parrot the pre-prepared lines that nobody actually thinks their CPRS is much good. It is the most friendless and flawed policy proposal that I have seen dismissed so roundly by the Australian people in decades. What we have got instead is now an attempt to attack the opposition for a costed, considered and practical strategy to bring about actual outcomes.

If you want to see any clear evidence about how disconnected, arrogant and out of touch the Rudd Labor government is, just reflect on the comments the finance minister made. The finance minister stood in here and talked about the cost of the CPRS. He did not talk about the cost to the Australian economy—no, because that is over $100 billion. He did not talk about the cost of Labor’s flawed and friendless ETS on consumers and small businesses. He did not talk about any of that. All he talked about was what the net impact would be on government revenue. That was what the Minister for Finance and Deregulation characterised as the cost of the Rudd government’s flawed and friendless ETS.

This is clearly an example of just how narrow and limited the Rudd Labor government’s analysis is and how its concerns about the cost of its great big tax on everyone and everything, every bit of activity that goes on in our nation, are constrained to what the impact is on the coffers in Canberra. I did not come here just to worry about what the numbers may be in budgetary documents that are of great and gripping consequence for us and for those who are involved in public policy development. That is not the limit of my analysis. I am here to represent the people of my community, and for them the net cost in government expenditure terms is not a true reflection of the actual costs they will be forced to pay as a consequence of the Rudd government’s flawed and friendless ETS. These are households already feeling cost-of-living pressures at every turn. These are families that are struggling to make sure that their budgets balance and that they can provide for their families and prepare for the future. These are people running so close to their own household budgetary limits that they are anxious about job security and the risk that a loss of income for any period of time might be for their household budgets, for their lives, not about the net cost for the government in general revenue terms. These are real people in houses right across our continent, and they want to know what the cost is.

We saw in the parliament today during question time an attempt to have Prime Minister Rudd turn his mind to the actual costs, the impacts of his flawed and friendless ETS, and he could not give an answer. We saw him on television this morning talking about a basket of goods and services but unable to answer very basic and specific questions about the cost impact on bread, milk and other essentials of life. When we talk about the cost of the Rudd government’s flawed and friendless ETS, the coalition parties, the Liberal and National parties, are focused on the cost impacts for Australian families, for small businesses, for enterprises in our country and what it might mean for their future, not on the narrow cost argument that the Rudd Labor government presents, where it is only the net impact on general revenue. What that line from the finance minister tries to hide is the enormous churn of over $100 billion of new tax revenue coming to the Commonwealth up until 2020, some of which gets redistributed as compensation for people who are feeling those cost penalties most starkly.

But then you look at what sits behind this. I am flabbergasted, as the small business community across Australia is comprehensively flabbergasted, about just how blind, indifferent and uninterested the Rudd Labor government is to the impact of its flawed and friendless ETS tax on everything. The small business community has been crying out for a hearing from the Rudd Labor government. It has been urging government ministers to take action and understand that the impacts on small business are punishing. These are small businesses that do not have the benefit of a busload of lobbyists running around the halls of power here negotiating sweetheart deals with the Rudd Labor government. These are small business men and women, operators and employees in those enterprises right across our continent, who just want to get on with running their small business, and when they looked for support, interest and engagement from the Rudd Labor government they got nothing. Even this morning on Sky Agenda, when Senator Brandis was debating the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy, Dr Emerson, about the CPRS, do you think Dr Emerson, supposedly the minister for small business, could actually mention small business in his defence of the system? He could not. He could not even utter the words ‘small business’ this morning when he was being debated by Senator Brandis on the impact of this flawed and friendless great big tax on everything, the ETS of the Rudd Labor government.

There is probably a reason why he did not mention small businesses. Small businesses are absolutely done over by this measure. They are done over comprehensively by these supposed compensation measures that do not apply to the vast majority of small businesses. In fact, for a small business to qualify for a little bit of largesse from the Rudd Labor government as it soaks up all of the tax revenue under its system you need to consume twice the amount of electricity that an average small business consumes. You have to be a big energy consumer in terms of the average small business to qualify for any of that compensation—that transient, uncertain and insecure compensation that is being waved around as the antidote to the financial pain of this great big tax on everything for small businesses right across our country.

It is not as if the Rudd Labor government does not know this. They have been pleaded with by the small business community to take account of the impact on small businesses. There is example after example of COSBOA saying, ‘We have been having a look at this great big tax on everything. You seem to have forgotten small business. Your compensatory measures do not even kick in unless businesses consume twice the amount of electricity that the average small business in Australia consumes.’ And even if businesses are eligible for this transient and uncertain ‘compensation’, as the Rudd Labor government describes it, compensation that reflects pain imposed on those small enterprises, it is about their electricity. Anybody who knows anything about businesses and how they operate knows that they have input costs, items that go into what they might be preparing and producing—the costs of operating their enterprises, of fitting out their premises, of having their team move around and offer goods and services to the marketplace. The activity of being engaged in business is not limited simply to electricity costs. All of those inputs to small business activity will have this great big tax on everything carried through with it, pushing up the costs of those small businesses, every one of them. So not only are the input costs, the punishing financial penalty of the Rudd government’s great big tax on everything for every small business, not factored into the calculations for this so-called compensation that is going to make everything sweet, you then need to consume twice the average electricity consumption of an Australian small business to even get a look in. No wonder the minister for small business could not talk about the interests of small business in his defence of this flawed and friendless scheme.

What we have before us are two starkly contrasting propositions. We could create a new bureaucracy and a new trading instrument or system where people will buy and sell permits. We are not quite sure what the outcome will be because the Rudd Labor government, which proposes it, is not certain either. We know that is going to cost an enormous amount of money that will be paid for by families and small businesses across Australia. Contrast that with the Abbott coalition plan. We are not offering funding for people having a go; we are not putting resources into creating some shimmy and shammy of a trading system in the hope that bits of those goings-on will produce an emissions reduction. No, we are not doing anything as indirect and obtuse as that. It is pretty simple: we are offering to purchase actual emissions reductions. We are buying outcomes to achieve our agreed national goals for emissions reductions.

The goals are not up for dispute here; the targets are agreed. The need to act—that is agreed. The fact that we have opportunities to achieve abatement—that is agreed. The question here is whether you create a great big tax on everything and hope that the punishing impact of that great big tax on everything under the Rudd government’s flawed and friendless ETS will actually make people do different things. That is the idea: punish them into doing different things. That is the Rudd Labor model: at the heart is the government, huge and rolling in cash that it pulls off regular Australians through increased charges on everything to then make some money available to share the love as only the Labor Party can. That is the option. Or you back the Abbott coalition proposal, where we purchase abatement outcomes. The small business community will be largely excluded from the need to have any additional responsibilities on them other than to—as they all do—consider how to make their business operations as efficient and as effective as they can. The NGER scheme, the national greenhouse and energy reporting scheme, does not involve small businesses, so they are not faced with any new regulatory burden. But, if small businesses want to come together and opt into the scheme and can deliver verifiable, secure emissions reductions, they will be able to be rewarded for that. How practical and straightforward is that? The government will enter the market and purchase emissions reduction outcomes at the cheapest price.

In the built environment, something Minister Garrett talks a lot about—he talks a good game, but does so little about it—an opportunity is here in the coalition’s scheme. Anyone with even a passing interest in international research would know that an ETS based or carbon tax based charge on energy needs to be extraordinarily high to bring about changes in the built environment, to see people bring about a change in their technologies in the building fabric and in the systems that they use. Yet we know—and anyone with an interest in the property industry knows through work that McKinsey, the Green Building Council of Australia, the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia and any number of professional groups have done—that there are very affordable, low-cost opportunities to reduce emissions in the built environment. But the Rudd government’s tax on everything—its flawed and friendless ETS—will not bring out those gains and opportunities because of demand inelasticity and the need for those price signals to be so high to bring about the change. Instead, in our proposal the built environment participants can engage. They can bundle up their abatement gains and enter the process where the government would purchase those delivered and secure gains. This is a good thing for the built environment.

So we have got supporting claim after supporting claim and industry after industry coming out and talking about just how positive this is and a government that will not turn its mind to and address the fundamental issues of the punishing impact of its flawed and friendless scheme on the small business community. In the recent COSBOA and Telstra business survey, the single most significant concern was:

While respondents were concerned about all of these issues, when asked which one issue was of the highest concern, the ETS /carbon tax and higher interest rates lead the pack by a significant margin.

The opposition has understood the impact of this flawed and friendless ETS tax on everything and has acted. Our scheme provides relief and comfort for the small business community. We understand they are the engine room—(Time expired)

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