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

ACIL Tasman has said that 16 coal mines will close costing 10,000 jobs. But the Greens, who are driving this agenda, want every mine closed—every single mine closed. That will cost hundreds of thousands of Australian jobs. In addition to that we have the extra costs that are going to be imposed on every business in this country, meaning they will be less competitive. There will be sectors right across the country that will have to bear bigger costs—agriculture for instance—even if Labor exempts agriculture at the first point. Professor Garnaut has made it clear that he wants agriculture in within two or three years. Australian farmers will be the only ones in the world to pay a carbon tax on the production of food for our nation.

In addition to that, of course, there is the processing of food. It seems that Australian dairy processors are to be the only dairy processors in the world to be paying a carbon tax. How does that enable them to compete with New Zealanders and others on world markets? When we look at the cost of transport and the cost to farmers of fertilisers and inputs, they are going to be less competitive and that, of course, means more lost jobs in regional areas. If you need any further advice about where the government's policy is heading, just take the words of Senator Hanson-Young whose advice to everybody was to close down the OneSteel plant at Whyalla—it will only cost 4,000 jobs—'and we will replace them by building windmills'. Let us have windmills all over the place because we will not have any other jobs.

Another statement that the Prime Minister made, which she has simply failed to honour, is the promise to compensate people for these extra costs. The government have already said that only half of the money raised will be used as compensation. But no-one can compensate people for the loss of their job, for the closure of whole industries and therefore, potentially, whole towns. There will be no compensation for those people. In fact, if you are not being paid anything because you have not got a job, no compensation will make up for the higher prices they have to pay.

Let me make another point, which I think is very important, the Prime Minister made another promise before the election. She promised that she would build community consensus before doing anything at all. Maybe she has not broken that promise. There is community consensus and the Australian people have made it absolutely clear that they have made up their mind and they do not want a carbon tax. The latest poll suggests over three-quarters of Australians do not want the tax. There is a community consensus and the government should listen. Call off Sunday. Do not have this big announcement. They have not achieved the consensus or, if they have, the consensus is there should be no tax at all.

Is it any wonder that ordinary Australians feel shut out and betrayed by what this government have said. They have not been consulted in the process. This has all been put together by some so-called multiparty committee, which is in fact an alliance between the Greens and the ALP with a couple of Independents as cheerleaders. The reality is that the Australian people have not been given the opportunity to have their say. The government did not tell the truth with the Australian people before the election. Now they are having a tax imposed on them that they had made absolutely clear they did not want, and they are not being consulted or given a chance to have any say.

What is going to be the benefit of this tax? The parliament secretary let the cat out of the bag when he said in a letter that this tax will make no difference even in 50 years' time. Professor Flannery, another one of the Labor Party's favoured sons in this particular area, went further. He said that if the whole of the world stopped emitting immediately it would not make any difference to the temperature for a thousand years. Yet this government believe that for Australia, which produces 1.4 per cent of global emissions, a tax is going to change the world. That is complete nonsense.

I ask the government: on Sunday do not tell us how much you are going to tax us and how you are going to distribute that money around the place, but tell us how many polar bears you expect the tax is actually going to save. Tell us how much better off the Barrier Reef is going to be because of the $25 a tonne Labor imposed tax, or whatever the price might be, on Australian consumers. Tell us how often the Murray will fill because this tax has been imposed.

I have never seen a tax in my life that changes the climate. Sometimes it makes people get hot under the collar, but to suggest that a new tax is actually going to make our planet cooler is clearly a nonsense. If taxes made the country cooler, under a Labor government we would be frozen over from west to east. There are plenty of taxes already. The government have no mandate for a carbon tax. They have no legitimacy for government. They said they will not have a plebiscite. If you will not have a plebiscite then you must have an election to decide this issue. (Time expired)

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