Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

As each day passes in this place and in public life you build your integrity, like putting aside grains of sand one at a time, with the Australian people and the people you represent in this place. Over time when you have to make hard decisions you will go to that bank and spend a bit of the good fortune. What we have seen from this government, particularly in relation to the carbon tax, is the expenditure of everything in the bank and a request for the Australian people to go into deficit.

This government from the very beginning, as my leader said earlier today, has engaged in deceit. It has engaged in deceit on a spectacular level. The now Prime Minister wants the Australian people to believe that she has had to undertake this deceitful path because she does not control the numbers in the House, but the truth is that in the caucus minutes of the special meeting of the federal parliamentary Labor Party on Thursday, 24 June, Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard were referred to specifically by the Prime Minister they had deposed overnight. That Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said:

… strong was the advice from Wayne and Julia that the emissions trading scheme policy had to be abandoned.

He did not say why. This Prime Minister feigns significant concern about the environment. I do not know whether she has been asked this question but I think she needs to give the Australian people an answer: why did she in April last year advise the then Prime Minister to dump the emissions trading scheme? Why did the Treasurer advise the then Prime Minister in April of last year to dump the emissions trading scheme?

Now everyone in this 24-hour opinion cycle has a view, but the view I want is from the mouth of the Prime Minister. Why did she advise Kevin Rudd to dump the emissions trading scheme? If it is a matter of such grand principle, if this is the fight to end all battles, the Prime Minister needs to explain to the Australian people why she shirked that fight in April of last year. And the Prime Minister needs to go further and explain to the Australian people exactly why she emphatically promised them not once but twice during the course of an election campaign that she would not lead a government that had a carbon tax—specifically referring to a carbon tax. The Prime Minister was doing that with the full knowledge that, were she to be re-elected, she would rely, almost inevitably, on the Greens for the balance of power in the Senate. That is the second great deceit in relation to this matter.

The third great deceit is the announcement, in the presence of Bob Brown and Christine Milne, of the carbon tax itself. I am still amazed that the Treasurer of Australia, the Deputy Prime Minister, was not there for the announcement of what he keeps referring to as a major economic reform. It is quite extraordinary that the Treasurer was not there. But what is more interesting is that the Greens’ deputy leader said it was a shared power arrangement between the Labor government and the Greens. I wonder what the earlier speaker in this debate, the member for Grayndler, would have thought about that—as he comes to the point where his wife is about to be knocked off by a Green in her seat in New South Wales on Saturday. There is the Prime Minister praising the Greens, and now the Greens are the mortal enemy of the Labor Party in New South Wales. How does that work? Not only is Carmel Tebbutt in serious trouble, but the member for Grayndler’s protege, Verity Firth, is in trouble. If there are going to be those defeats on Saturday, I say to you: Julia Gillard’s unstinting praise of the Greens must have had some impact, because Julia Gillard was endorsing the Greens when she was not endorsing Carmel Tebbutt, Verity Firth, the Labor candidate in Melbourne or Labor senators who have aspired to try to knock off the Greens in the Senate. What a confused web we weave.

It goes further. The government then sees that it is bleeding. It announces a tax without a price. It announces that it is going to exclude one industry, agriculture, but it does not talk about other industries. It is a confused announcement. Out of that we had a great revelation. It was the fact that the government was caught without any clothes in relation to compensation. The government was clinging to the debate about the environmental justification for the carbon tax but it was losing; it was sinking. Along comes Ross Garnaut, who says: ‘Well, here’s the Henry review. Remember this? We’ll dust it off.’ The government adopted three of 138 recommendations. ‘Guess what: let’s grab the Henry tax review tax cuts. That’s the way we can provide compensation.’ At first the government thought that was a great idea and its great advocates in the gallery and great commentators out there were saying: ‘This is brilliant politics. Give tax cuts. The coalition can’t oppose them.’

The only problem was that the Henry tax cuts actually delivered significant financial benefits to people earning above $200,000. In fact, if you earned $300,000 you would get nearly $5,000 in the Henry tax cuts. We do not oppose those sorts of tax cuts, but what we have a problem with is that middle Australia is going to pay more. Those on $40,000 to $90,000 are actually going to pay more, not less. The government went, ‘Hang on; this is a problem. We didn’t think about this when we talked about Henry. Ross Garnaut? Well, he’s an adviser. He’s not part of the team, really.’ So what happens is another thought bubble from the government, the low income tax offset. ‘Let’s pull that out of the can: the low income tax offset, a great idea. We can run with that. That’s how we’ll provide compensation to low-income Australians.’ There is just a little problem. Ken Henry recommended it be abolished. ‘Don’t worry about Ken Henry. No, we’ll get the dust back on that report. We’ll never see it again. Aha—the low income tax offset!’ But there is just a little problem: it is a rebate, so people will be out of pocket as the tax kicks in. They will only get a rebate at the end of the financial year—or, for some, they will get up to 50 per cent, but they will be worse off. Oh dear! The government says, ‘We’re going to give compensation and we’re going to give tax cuts.’

Today, on Neil Mitchell’s program, the Prime Minister was asked repeatedly about the numbers. She could not answer. That is because they do not have an answer. That is because they are making it up as they go, and this is the fundamental point. When we get criticised by some for winding back compensation it is a simple point: if you do not inflict pain, you do not need painkillers. It is simple. And do you know what? This government wants to impose a carbon tax. You do not have to have compensation if you are not penalising people with a carbon tax. I felt I was in another universe during today’s question time, when the Prime Minister was speaking like a modern-day riddler. What the hell was she saying? How confused is this debate that the Prime Minister has led Australians down? All she can do is say that we are running a scare campaign. We are not doing it—the Prime Minister is doing it. It is all her own work. She is the master of the evil. She is the one that is running this scare campaign, because she does not understand what she is saying.

So I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will oppose the carbon tax because it is bad policy. We will not need to compensate people because we will not inflict pain on the Australian people. This is a government that does not know what it is doing. You have a Treasurer that did not know that John Fahey was going to be appointed. You have a Prime Minister that did not know a Treasurer was going to announce a tax summit. You have a government that is in confusion and denial. You have a foreign minister that is declaring war on Libya and a Prime Minister that does not want to do it. What is going on in the joint? The clowns are running the show. (Time expired)

See this speech in context