Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion proposed by the member for Throsby. Sadly, this motion is just a continuation of this government’s conscious and deliberate deception as they try and hoodwink the public to support the insanity of burdening the Australian economy with a carbon tax. Let’s have a closer look at the detail of this motion. The first deception of the motion is the use of the words ‘putting a price on carbon’. These words are simply Labor code for ‘a great big new tax’. One thing you can be sure about is this: if it looks like a new tax, if it increases prices like a new tax and if the Labor Party has anything to do with it, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is a new tax. But this government is incapable of telling the truth as it refuses to call it what it is: a new tax. The second deception of this motion is the phrase ‘reducing carbon pollution’. This new tax is about reducing emissions of the odourless gas carbon dioxide. The words ‘carbon pollution’ create the false impression that this tax will address the problem of toxic black carbon soot and particulate matters that are emitted into the atmosphere, especially from diesel exhaust. But this new tax has nothing to do with this real environmental problem.

If we cut away the deceptions in the first paragraph of this motion, what is left simply reveals the government’s failure to grasp the most basic economic principles. This tax simply will not be effective at decreasing carbon dioxide emissions as it fails to understand that electricity and petrol are relatively price inelastic. They are essential services. We can look at the example of what happened in Norway after it introduced a carbon tax in 1991. The Norwegians, just like this Labor government, thought that introducing a carbon tax would reduce CO2 emissions. However, what happened in Norway is that per capita emissions actually increased by 43 per cent after the tax was introduced. In other words, the introduction of their carbon tax was a complete and unmitigated failure, and now this government wants to take Australia down the same mistaken track. That is why the coalition’s plan, our direct action plan, will be more effective at reducing CO2 emissions.

As for the second paragraph of this motion, about the government’s creation of so-called green jobs, we thank the member for Throsby for reminding the House of this government’s track record in creating green jobs, such as the jobs they created with the disaster of the ceiling insulation scheme, the Green Loans fiasco and the solar rebate scheme—one bungled and flawed scheme after another that have wasted billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds. Again, we should be learning from the mistakes of other nations, especially Europe, where in many countries, for every green job they have created, in the same process they have destroyed at least two other real jobs in other sectors of the economy.

We come to the third and, thankfully, final paragraph of this member’s motion, and here the deception continues. As for the talk of a carbon constrained future, perhaps the member is in secret talks with the Chinese or with our friends from India, as in future decades these countries will be using more and more coal as they lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Recently we have heard the government try to sell the story that everyone will be compensated for price increases that will result from this new tax. Let me see if I have this right. The government introduces this great, big new tax, then it creates a giant money-churning bureaucracy in Canberra, then it gives a few hundred million dollars to the UN and then it has enough to compensate everyone. We have the Prime Minister, who promised that there will be no carbon tax under a government that she leads, now saying: ‘Trust me—you’ll be compensated. The cheque’s in the mail.’ The public will not be fooled twice.

Members of parliament should stand up for their constituents, but where is the member for Throsby? He has not only sold out his own electorate to curry favour with the inner-city Greens but, with motions like this, he is leading an assault on the very people who voted for him, threatening their jobs and planning to punish them by increasing their cost of living. The obnoxious and dishonest political spin and misleading propaganda that characterise this motion are a disgrace and an embarrassment to the member who moved it. (Time expired)

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