Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to be able to rise tonight to talk on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2011-12 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2011-12 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2011-12. In talking about the budget tonight, there are eight points that I would like to make. The first is with regard to the carbon tax. One of the alarming things about the budget was that it made no reference to the carbon tax. The government told us that it could not because there was no detail. Yet the mining tax was not finalised and we saw the mining tax included in the budget. Why, then, wasn't the carbon tax included—especially given the impact that it is going to have across the nation on families, on the manufacturing sector and on our agricultural sector? There will not be a part of life in Australia that this tax will not hit and will not impact on.

There are a couple of points that I would like to make on the carbon tax. One is that I was extremely disappointed to see that there was no new spending on bringing the rest of the world together so that we can address this global problem with a global solution. What we needed to see, rather than funding going towards trying to get our foreign minister a seat on the UN Security Council so that he can go off and do whatever he wants to do in the United Nations, was a focus on what he once called the greatest moral issue of our time. Yet there is nothing in this budget about what we are trying to do globally to get a global solution to this problem.

Instead, what we are hearing is complete silence on what impact the carbon tax will have. I would like to refer to some of the impacts that we are seeing. There was a very good report issued by the National Farmers Federation yesterday that showed that five years after the carbon tax is introduced, if it hits a rate of $36 a tonne—which is not unreasonable—you are likely to see a wheat-growing property incur additional costs of $36,000. Our farming community has to deal with the weather, the dollar and overseas commodity prices. Now we are whacking a $36,000 impost on them as a result of the carbon tax. Do we get a mention of that in the budget? No, we do not. Do we get a mention on what impact it will have on our manufacturing sector, a key sector? Portland Aluminium in my electorate have already made huge inroads into cutting their emissions. As a matter of fact, based on 2005 levels, they have already cut their emissions by 20 per cent. That is fantastic work and they should be rewarded in some way or, if not rewarded, they should at least be acknowledged in some way for that. Yet, what will the carbon tax do? It will penalise them even further and they will get nothing for already having started this work in reducing emissions.

That is what we are going to see occur across our manufacturing sector. The high energy costs which they have been hit with, which has led them in many instances to try and do very good work in cutting emissions, will count for nought because 'whack' they will get hit by the carbon tax again. While some of the bigger manufacturers may be able to get permits, and maybe get permits up to a 95 per cent free allocation; the smaller manufacturers in Australia will not. They will be hung out to dry with devastating consequences especially in regional areas. It is our small manufacturers in our country towns that provide the majority of our jobs.

It is extremely disappointing that we saw no reference to the carbon tax in the budget, particularly when it will start on exactly the same date as the mining tax, 30 June next year, and the mining tax was included in the budget. I think the Treasurer, Mr Swan, would have preferred that it was not because, only a few weeks after the mining tax was included, the Western Australian government blew a big hole in Mr Swan's budget. It is a budget which is built on a house of cards. It is a budget that may get a surplus in three years although, as we have seen, it has been a long time between drinks before a Labor government delivered a budget surplus.

Before we focus on three years time, and that is in part what the Treasurer wanted us to do, we should focus on the here and now because we saw a budget deficit of $47 billion dollars for the last financial year. I just want to put that in perspective. The Victorian state budget was handed down a week before the federal budget. The total expenditure for the whole Victorian budget is $47 billion. So our second biggest state's total budget, which includes all the spending in health, education and transport, is the size of the budget deficit which was handed down in this last federal budget.

It does not get any better next year. The forecast is for $21 billion. What is the effect of that? We already have debt of $106 billion which means we are paying back $135 million a day of Labor debt. Just think for a moment what that money could be spent on, and think for a moment about the $96 billion debt that Labor left us the last time they were voted out of office. Think of the length of time it took us to pay that off. Although we have been focusing on a minute surplus in three years time, we should not lose sight of what we have here and now, and that is budget deficit followed by budget deficit, and we are seeing net debt increasing to $106 billion, which amounts to $135 million a day to pay back. What we need to see now is the government saying, 'We're asking the rest of the community to tighten its belt. We're going to do the same.' But unfortunately we are seeing no indication that the waste will stop. We saw a very glitzy presentation of the NBN being rolled out in Armadale, but I think I am right in saying that so far we have seven people signed up to the NBN in Armadale. We saw a very glitzy launch down in Tasmania, in Launceston, but once again the uptake leaves a lot to be desired. So we are seeing waste continue on a vast scale.

It does not seem that the government has learnt its lessons from the stimulus package, where we saw the BER waste billions of dollars. There was not only the pink batt fiasco but also the home insulation inspection scheme fiasco. The prize example in my seat of Wannon was where we had an inspector come down to inspect six units. He did four because that is what the regulations told him he could do. He flew back to Sydney and then a fellow from the Gold Coast flew down two weeks later—

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