Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This is why it is necessary that we get on with the suspension. She said as she left this chamber just the other day to her staff, 'I'm over it.' The truth is that the Australian people are over this Prime Minister. They are over this Prime Minister, and the members of her team who have manufacturing jobs in their seats are well and truly over this Prime Minister.

Today we heard the Prime Minister talking. She got very nostalgic today talking about the good old days of Coronation Hill and saving Kakadu. I suppose Bob Hawke brings on that kind of a sensation in our Prime Minister because, yes, he was a successful Labor Prime Minister. He was a reforming Labor Prime Minister. While we are talking about Bob Hawke, Julia Gillard's commitment that, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,' was as honest a statement as the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke's that, 'By 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty.' They are two dishonest Labor prime ministers.

This Prime Minister is sacrificing the manufacturing jobs of our country. This carbon tax is a toxic tax. It is toxic for manufacturing and it is toxic for the coal industry because the whole point of a carbon tax is to reduce and ultimately eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels. The whole point of a carbon tax is to shrink and ultimately to kill the coal industry. I am very pleased that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has the guts to take this debate. He has coalmines in his electorate and if this minister has any honesty, any decency and any respect for the coalmining workers in his electorate and any respect for the manufacturing workers in his electorate he will level with them and explain just why the government he represents wants to kill their industries and kill their jobs—because that is what is happening. The minister might tell us why he keeps calling the honest manufacturing industries of this country and the coalminers of this country big polluters. Why does he defame, insult and denigrate the manufacturing companies of our country? Why doesn't he understand, as so many members sitting behind him understand, that these so-called big polluters are the big employers, the big exporters and the big innovators of our country? They are the people that we rely on for our standard of living and they should not be destroyed by this government's carbon tax.

We know that this tax is toxic because all the experts have told us that it is toxic. Andrew McKellar from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries says that under Labor's carbon tax we will not have green jobs; we will have green unemployment. The website of ManufacturingAustralia, which represents such great Australian businesses as Amcor, BlueScope, Boral, CSR and Rheem, says of the government's carbon tax:

It tolls the death knell for manufacturing in Australia.

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The aftershocks of a carbon tax will reverberate through our nation at an enormous cost, flowing through and driving up the costs of every commodity that is part of the fabric of our society.

Even Paul Howes, the midnight assassin, the hatchet man who put the Prime Minister in office, now realises his mistake. It is like Cassius now realises the mistake he made in assassinating Julius Caesar. I think Paul Howes wants Kevin Rudd back. He really does want Kevin Rudd back. Paul Howes said, 'Carbon pricing could be the straw that breaks the camel's back as far as some of these industries are concerned.' He also said, 'If one job is gone, our support is gone.'

Finally, we have one Labor member of parliament who is now speaking out publicly about the deadly threat that the carbon tax poses to the manufacturing industries of Australia. I am not surprised that, finally, the member representing Smorgon Steel at Rooty Hill, the member for Chifley, has come out and said, 'Yes, I can honestly say there are people that do have concerns about the impact this will have on families.' Good on the member for Chifley. There is one brave Labor member who is here to keep tabs on the minister and to make sure that this minister is not dishonest with the Australian people and is not dishonest with the workers of this country about the impact of this toxic tax on their jobs. But there are more Labor members of parliament who know the damage this tax is doing to jobs in their electorates and they will be heard. They will say to this Prime Minister, 'You drop the toxic tax or we will drop you.'

I have visited so many manufacturing plants over the last three months since this tax was announced by the Prime Minister. I have heard the voice of the manufacturing workers of this country. I understand that they are proud of what they do. They know that an Australia without a steel industry, without an aluminium industry, without a cement industry, without a glass industry, without a plastics industry and, above all else, without a motor industry is not an Australia that makes things any more and is not a first-class economy. This side of the parliament will fight to preserve Australia as a country that makes things and a country that is a first class manufacturing nation. (Time expired)

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