Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah moving immediately:

(1)

That this House suspend proceedings forthwith so that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer can defend themselves against the very serious charge of deceiving the Australian people about the introduction of a carbon tax, in particular, that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer address the following questions before the full scrutiny of this House:

(a)

how the Prime Minister can claim any semblance of a mandate for her carbon tax when she said, five days before the election “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”;

(b)

how the Prime Minister can maintain the trust of the Australian people when she said one day before the election that “I rule out a carbon tax”;

(c)

how the Treasurer can be trusted with a trillion dollar economy when he said six days before the election that he “rejected this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax … we certainly reject that”;

(d)

how the Treasurer can ever be believed again when he said, in relation to a carbon tax, that “we have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out”; and

(2)

that the Prime Minister and Treasurer stand before the people of Australia whose trusts they have abused and whose mandate they do not have, to argue why a carbon tax won’t destroy jobs, the economy and our standard of living.

The Prime Minister today stood up before her caucus colleagues and said that she was very confident she could win a debate on the carbon tax. If she is so confident, why did she not have the debate before the last election? If she is so confident, why will she not have the debate with the next election? The fact of the matter is that this Prime Minister knows she cannot win any debate on a carbon tax because she knows (a) that it is bad policy and (b) that it is based on a lie.

We had the Treasurer stand up in this parliament today boasting—hysterically, almost—about what a courageous decision it was. I will tell you what, Mr Speaker: it would have been courageous to talk about it before the election. That is what courageous governments do: they talk about things before an election, not after an election. The courageous thing for this government to do now would be to seek a mandate for the carbon tax that it ruled out before the election and now has ruled in. If the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were so confident about the case for a carbon tax, why did they go to the last election running on a lie? They say that they want to give business certainty. If the Prime Minister was so keen to give business certainty, why did she sabotage the former Prime Minister’s campaign to have an emissions trading scheme in the last term of parliament? Perhaps it was not the Prime Minister who went in to see Kevin Rudd and sabotaged the ETS; perhaps it was a body double? Perhaps it was not the Prime Minister who stood up before the Channel 10 cameras during the election and said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.’ Maybe it was a body double.

This is the Prime Minister who understands business so well. Oh yes, she knows what business wants. She knows that business demands certainty. The certainty that it is going to get from this government is the certainty of taxes, taxes and yet more taxes. That is the last certainty that the businesses of Australia want—higher taxes. I have a little lesson for the Prime Minister and for the Treasurer. Higher taxes do not generate more investment. Higher taxes do not improve an economy. Business might want certainty, but it does not want the certainty of ever more taxes under a government that it just cannot trust.

Let me remind the House of these words that should echo around this chamber every day between now and the next election—these words that will haunt the Prime Minister every day that is left to her in this parliament. She said: ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead. I rule out a carbon tax.’ The truth is—I regret to say it of the person who holds the highest elected office in this country—that she told a lie to win votes and she broke a promise to form a government. It was a breach of faith—

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