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

I am making the point that this Prime Minister has no legitimacy. It is a point I am entitled to make because the people were misled by her telling a deliberate lie with a promise before the election and breaking it after the election.

I go to the next point—that they say there is to be a carbon tax. The government chooses from time to time to make an analogy between the carbon tax and the GST that was introduced by the coalition government under Prime Minister Howard. The difference is this. When John Howard changed his mind about the need for a GST to be introduced, he took it to an election and the Australian people voted upon it. Not only did he properly take it to an election, he also abolished the wholesale sales tax and other taxes so that the GST was a replacement tax. It is also a value added tax, whereby when the tax is paid at each level it is also refunded so that only the final consumer pays the tax; it is not compounded at every level. That is the distinction between that and the carbon tax, which is a cascading tax. It compounds at every level because at every level the tax is paid. A clear example, which has been made quite public and backed up by authorities, is a tax on bricks that are used in building houses. The tax on those bricks will then be cascaded all the way down to the house itself. The Housing Industry Association has indicated that it believes the price of the house will increase by $6,000 and a mortgage repayment will rise by around $43 a month. So, when we say the carbon tax is a tax on everything, it will get into every nook and cranny of everything that is done.

The Labor Party says, 'We are going to offer compensation to the lowest paid'—that is, people who are probably on a total pension without other income—and some compensation for the so-called middle class and none for anybody else,' using again family tax benefit part A as the test. That is the benefit from which the government has just taken away $2 billion and then spent around $1.7 billion on boat people. So we penalise our own Australian families to try to pay for the messed-up, disastrous policy of boat people coming to this country. The Labor Party will be using that same test to decide who shall get compensation.

We have to be very careful here because the compensation that will be paid will be a one-off measure but the tax will be there permanently. The tax is something that will eat into every saving, every payment, but most of all it will eat into the disposable income that people have, and that income is depended upon by the retail sector and the manufacturing sector to survive.

Let us look at why that is so. There are certain things that people have to have in a civilised society as an absolute necessity. Electricity is one of those things. Electricity marks civilisation from non-civilised behaviour. We have at every turn a need for electricity: you cannot have a sewerage system without electricity, you cannot have clean water without electricity and you cannot have safe streets without electricity. Ninety per cent of electricity on the eastern seaboard is generated from coal-fired power stations. Eighty per cent across Australia comes from coal-fired power stations.

We have already seen that the cost of electricity has been rising at an enormous rate—50 per cent since this government came in. Part of the reason for that is a dictate that 20 per cent of all power has to be purchased by 2020 from renewables. There was an attempt by the government with that legislation to allow wind and solar to crowd out the market. I introduced a private member's bill that would allow some room to be left for tidal, thermal and other innovative sources of energy that might come on stream later on. The fact of the matter is that wind and solar are hugely expensive, as we are seeing in New South Wales with the enormous blowout in the cost of electricity generated by subsidised panels on roofs with a very high tariff feed-in. Pensioners are being forced to pay a subsidy to those people who have put those on the roof because it is so expensive.

The bottom line is that people will always have to pay for their electricity, and so that will take up a very fixed part of their available income. They will also have to pay for their gas, rates, mortgage, internet and phones, leaving less and less money to spend on things that are in retail outlets and those things that come into retail outlets from manufacturers. Fifty per cent of all electricity bought by the business sector is bought by manufacturers. They will be hit, and hit very hard. While the dollar is as strong as it is, they will be doubly hit.

We have a situation where we have a government which has no mandate, was not elected, has stitched up a deal and promised not to introduce a tax but which it is now going to impose on people without taking it to the Australian people for a mandate and punish the people and the economy—all in the name of trying to do something for the environment. What a laugh! It will do nothing for the environment at all. It will penalise and hurt families and individuals—and they know it. Boy, do they express their point of view. Whenever I am out and about they come and tell me, 'Get rid of that woman; get rid of that government.' That is how the Australian people are feeling.

The philosophy that guides this government is very simple. The government will always believe that it can spend the people's money better than individuals can. We on this side of the House believe that individuals will always spend their own money better than governments that take it compulsorily by way of taxation and then say, 'We will spend it on your behalf.' That is a fundamental difference between Labor and the Liberal coalition.

When we look at these appropriation bills we see the most important thing that is threatening the Australian people is the great big tax on everything—not even mentioned in the budget, not even factored in, although it is supposed to take effect on 1 July next year. What a joke. Here is a Treasurer who gave a speech and was shown in this parliament today to have misled the Australian people. He misled the parliament this afternoon when he said that the actions in Western Australia had come 'out of the blue' when he knew damned well—when he agreed to pay back to the miners what is paid in royalties—that the Western Australian Premier intended to lift the concession on fines. When I say that this is an illegitimate government, it is true in every sense of the word, both in the way they came to power and the way in which they are using it and abusing it.

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