Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

good people; people who want to drive their car to see their sick mother; and people who want to go to the shops to buy some food and groceries. And the people have to be punished for this sort of activity—‘they have to be taxed; their behaviour has to be changed; they are evil; they are polluting’. Their behaviour has to be changed by a gigantic tax. But the government is now being told by everyone that this tax will not really work. The economists were out in force today to explain that this tax will not achieve its objectives. The March edition of Quadrant’s economic survey says:

ICAP’s senior economist Adam Carr said a carbon tax would have natural negative effects for both inflation and economic activity in Australia.

He said:

A carbon tax is inflationary, there’s no way around that.

He also said:

There is also no way around the fact that it will cut growth. I mean, where are the large scale viable energy alternatives in the short to medium term? So, really, all putting a tax on carbon will do is lift inflation; it will lift the price or the cost of economic activity. This in turn will cut growth and reduce our standard of living.

This is the kind of ‘wonder’ tax that the government wants to impose upon the Australian people. Economists say it will not work. If you give all of the money back to people by way of compensation, they will not try to change their behaviour, so it will make no difference whatsoever to CO2 emissions. Indeed, it will probably make them worse, because one of the things that this tax will do—as we heard today in question time and as we have heard in the media over recent times—is make doing business in this country more costly.

It will give companies every possible reason to locate their manufacturing industry and create jobs in other places. Toyota Australia said that the carbon tax will ‘leave them in a corner with nowhere to go’. The Australian Food and Grocery Council wondered whether the government even wants food and grocery manufacturing in Australia. The Australian Housing Industry said: ‘It will add $6,200 to the cost of an average home.’ OneSteel observed that a carbon tax ‘will significantly disadvantage Australian manufacturers’. BlueScope described the carbon tax as ‘the steel breaker’.

How can the government reasonably claim that this is a good and sensible thing to do? But let me give you another quote: ‘The carbon tax will not be good for tourism.’ That was not from some evil polluter or some big industry or some big employer; that was said by the federal minister for tourism, Mr Ferguson. When he met the Indian minister for tourism and culture, Ambika Soni, in India on 6 November 2008, he said a ‘carbon tax on aviation is not good for tourism’. So even the government knows that this is a job-destroying tax.

This is a tax that will hurt Australian people. This is a tax that will drive Australian jobs overseas to factories where the CO2 emissions will be much greater than in an environmentally sensitive country like Australia. When you close down a cement factory in Australia and open up one in China to supply cement to Australians you increase CO2 emissions. If you close down an Australian aluminium refinery, you may cut emissions in Australia but you increase the emissions in other countries where the emissions are much greater.

I visited the smelter in Kurri Kurri last week with Mr Baldwin, one of the members nearby, and we were impressed by the very real concerns of the trade union representatives we met and the management of the firm about the future of their jobs. They know that their owners will not invest again in Australia if we have this tax that other countries do not have. They know the next investment decisions will be to go to countries like Qatar, China or Indonesia, because they do not have such a tax. The uncertainty created by the government’s floating of this stupid carbon tax idea, this cure-all—the carbon tax that is going to save the world—has already damaged confidence in Australian industry and forced people to make decisions to invest in other parts of the world.

This is a tax that will not help the environment. This is a tax that will not make Australia prosperous. This is a tax that will not do things for Australian families. This is a tax that will destroy Australian jobs. This is a tax that will hurt Australians, and it should be rejected by all Australians. (Time expired)

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