Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened with interest to the bleating of the Labor Party members this afternoon, and basically they just do not get it. There is not going to be an ETS tax. Perhaps I will borrow the words of Peter Hartcher, who commented in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. He said:

As today will noisily demonstrate, one of the big, futuristic ideas Rudd championed, the plan to tackle climate change with an emissions trading system, is no longer in the national future.

… it’s now a lost prospect, rapidly receding in the rear-vision mirror.

So Rudd needs a new future.

He then goes on to comment that he has discovered the 10-year-old analysis that showed that Australia has an ageing population, that there is a demographic change. He said that perhaps Mr Rudd can latch onto this and that can be his big, new, future-championing issue.

Terry McCrann, on the other hand, is very analytical and points out that the aim of Mr Rudd to have an ETS, which is a massive tax on everything and will do nothing to assist the growth in productivity, is deliberately at odds with the policy that Mr Rudd now wishes to champion, which is to have an increase in productivity. He points out very ably that the one thing that will allow us to have an increase in productivity is cheap energy, yet that is exactly what this government wants to tax, having that tax cascade right down through the community as a whole so that the impact is felt by ordinary mums and dads—ordinary families—to the tune of $1,100 a year. That is every year. The tax is forever—or it would have been forever. The so-called churned compensation payments are temporary—they are for three years—but the impost, the $1,100 per family, is forever and escalating.

If you look at the response that has been received by the coalition to the announcement of its policy this morning, you will see that it is totally different from what is being said by Labor Party members in the chamber. I think it is useful to quote from a few of the releases that are being put out by responsible organisations who want people to know that they are supportive of the coalition’s approach. The Australian Retailers Association, the peak national industry body, has come out in support of Tony Abbott’s proposed climate change policy, acknowledging the key features being no impact on jobs and no new taxes. It says:

Tony Abbott has today shown that there are options to support responsible environmental considerations without instituting a massive new tax and putting thousands of Australian jobs at risk.

It further says:

Australian small businesses, Australian jobs and Australian working families all want responsible and positive environmental solutions at a national level. What they don’t want and can’t afford is the Rudd ETS tax that will send us backwards as a nation.

That is Mr Driscoll, who was making that comment on behalf of the Retailers Association. The Australian Food and Grocery Council says:

The Australian Food and Grocery Council has welcomed the coalition’s approach to a carbon reduction scheme that provides incentives for business to reduce emissions while minimising the cost to industry and the Australian economy.

What we have been saying from the beginning is that it is vital that any approach to climate change does not hurt the competitiveness of Australian businesses and industry. In the aftermath of Copenhagen, it is clear that a tax on business will result in jobs, investment and emissions being sent offshore to China, India and Indonesia. Any scheme that adds new cost to Australian manufactured goods and does not affect imports from countries like China and Indonesia will simply raise prices for families and increase unemployment in rural and regional Australia, jobs which are already scarce.

The National Farmers Federation says that it:

… welcomes the general principles outlined today in the Coalition’s climate change mitigation policy as it relates to the farm sector.

It says that it is:

… buoyed by the recognition of the positive role that farmers can play in reducing greenhouse gas concentrations and storing carbon.

That, incidentally, was responded to by, I think, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, who said it was just going to be a ‘mighty slush fund’. The National Farmers Federation has a much higher opinion of farmers.

The NFF is encouraged that the Coalition has committed to an incentive based scheme for farmers to drive abatement from their sector … In addition, we are comforted by the Coalition’s commitment to no additional indirect costs to energy and energy related farm inputs, which can have a major impact on the profitability of our businesses and regional communities.

       …         …         …

The Coalition is … right to acknowledge the need to consider potential impacts on agriculture …

The Minerals Council of Australia, quoted earlier, said:

The Coalition’s climate change policy strikes at the real intent of pricing carbon—providing an incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without negatively impacting on jobs, investment, exports and growth.

The Minerals Council of Australia welcomes the shift to a policy designed to use incentives as a driver to reduce emissions rather than an approach that is pre-occupied with penalising business to raise revenue.

The Coalition’s proposal establishes an incentive for companies to invest billions of dollars in breakthrough technologies critical to reducing emissions. Without the commercial development and deployment of low emissions technology—such as clean coal—emissions reductions targets are merely a wing and a prayer.

There is no point trying to lead the world with aggressive climate change schemes if the major economies are not interested in following—or worse still, regard Australia’s initiatives as an example of what not to do.

The National Association of Forest Industries:

… welcomes the inclusion of direct forestry measures as part of the climate change policy package announced by the Federal Opposition today.

It says:

These measures reflect the important role forestry can play in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as the green energy that can be produced from wood wastes that are a byproduct of tree growing and processing activities …

The National Generators Forum said it does not support the federal government’s CPRS in its current form. It says:

The CPRS badly damages the asset values of generating business, which creates serious risk for energy security and investment.

Finally, ACCI, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says:

Given the uncertainty now existing after Copenhagen over what other nations will do, a domestic policy approach that provides more carrot than stick tends to reflect the temper of the times.

What are we proposing? A direct, straightforward policy which is careful, cautious, considered and valuable. There are no regulations. There is no new tax. There is an outcome which is positive right from the beginning, with the aim to improve soils and land. It is a simple and direct action program. It is quite contrary to the plan that the Labor Party has to remain dependent on the pain of increased electricity prices to force down the use of electricity and force reduction in emissions, thereby shrinking the economy as well.

In our proposal, put forward by the Leader of the Opposition this morning, business will be able to carry on business as usual. There is a cap. I heard speaker after speaker from the government side say that there is no cap—there is and it is accepted as necessary. The cap is the average of the emission level that particular business is emitting at the time. If that business wishes to expand, it will be able to expand at that same level; the cap will remain the same. If it wants to open up a new business, again it will have the same measurement for the cap. If that business decides that it can reduce its emissions and establish a new lower cap for itself, that will be the one that is accepted and binding but there will be compensation paid and they can sell those savings in emissions to the new emissions reduction fund. That is the $2.5 billion fund that has been established to see the lowering of emissions. But there is no fetter on business, there is no penalty for ordinary people and there is no harshness that says that you may not live in the 21st century in the way that you have come to believe is right for you and your family.

It will mean that, with research being done, there will be the ability to utilise our coal, particularly the very clean coal in New South Wales, which is sulfur free, and black coal. There is a $2 million fund which has been allocated to investigate the burying of high-voltage overhead power lines underground, which would free up those corridors of land which are currently dead land and not used. They could be used for growing trees, and the land could be sold off or used for a different nature. The urban green corridors that are proposed mean that there is a positive way of seeing new trees growing which will again assist with abatement but without additional costs.

The whole of the plan that has been put forward, which is one of incentives instead of punishment, is based on the fact that we can find the savings in the budget to pay for this scheme. I heard ministers across the table, particularly the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, demand calculations and costings and yet I found it quite extraordinary that he is a finance minister in a government where the Prime Minister could not answer a question in this chamber as to what would be the impact of the ETS on the cost of milk. He could not answer a similar question on television about bread and he could not answer a question, again in this chamber, as to what impact his additional tax on everything would have on a small business like a drycleaner. In every instance he ducks, weaves and avoids the question.

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