Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

All right, I will complete the point and follow your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker. The real world history of the last 30 years is that electricity prices go up, demand barely changes, people pay more and the consequence is that their cost of living is higher and their quality of life is lower. That is what this government is proposing along with—and I just give this last simple example—an impact on Australian-made passenger vehicles.

In the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers for Australian automotive manufacturers it was found that there would be a $412 increase in the price of Australian-made vehicles under a $30 per tonne carbon tax. A question for the government: how much would imported vehicles rise by? Answer: nothing. So the simple example, which I ask anybody to explain to me, is that Australian-made vehicles would rise by $412 under a $30 per tonne carbon tax, which we will get to if not in the first year, in the second, third or fourth, on its way to $50 per tonne by 2020. How can you have a $412 increase in Australian-made vehicles but nothing on imports? What is the logic, the sense, the reason or the justification for that disparity, where we punish Australian manufacturers and reward foreign-made vehicle importers? That is the example that summarises the structural flaws in the government's entire approach.

Against that background we have set out very clearly an alternative for Australia in an approach which will foster genuine carbon farming by decreasing emissions through capturing carbon on an incentives basis in soil, in our trees, in our vegetation, in other forms of landscape change, as well as in reducing emissions through cleaning up waste coalmine gas, cleaning up landfills, potentially converting some of our oldest and dirtiest power stations from the worst forms of emissions to cleaner forms of emissions, but without having an impact on electricity prices, because that would be dealt with in our program. That is the choice available. Against that set of considerations, let me give a summary. Our approach is incentives; their approach is tax. They have sought in part to adopt a measure that we are proposing in this bill. We are not opposed to the principle. We welcome the belated interest on the government side in reducing emissions through landscape carbon capture and storage. That is a good thing. But, as has been the case with the Home Insulation Program, with the Green Loans program, the Green Start program and the school halls program, if there is no detail, if there is no accountability and if there is a blank cheque, what we see is failure.

We would like, ultimately, to be able to pass this legislation and we will seek to move amendments pending the outcome of the Senate report across that range of seven areas which I identified. But, right now, we ask the government to make sure that it ends the practice of hiding the detail. If you have nothing to hide, produce the regulations. If you have nothing to hide, produce the detail. If you have nothing to hide, put flesh on the skeleton. Against that background, we have moved a second reading amendment simply to ensure that the House receive the full terms of the regulations giving effect to the provisions of the bill. That is an appropriate legislative practice. We ask for those details. We ask why the government is afraid to provide them. We ask why the government has not completed its work. We support the principles, we have outlined the principles and we would like to complete this bill. In its current form, it is not ready, but give us the detail, give us the regulations and, if you will not do that, say why you are afraid to provide the details.

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