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

The lady who will come out and announce this new tax is the same one who told the Australian people repeatedly before the last election that there would be no such tax. That was an untruth. A few days ago she said she did not mean to mislead. That was another untruth. She waited until she was in the Lodge and she had the keys before she told the truth to the Australian people.

Now she asks us to believe that she did not really mean to mislead. If she did not mean to mislead why did she not correct the newspaper headlines in the days that were available before the election? Why did she not ring up the television news services and say: 'You got it wrong. I did not say that at all'? What she said before the election was 'there will be no carbon tax'. There was no lack of intention to mislead. Let us make that absolutely clear.

That is not the end of the untruths that the government has told us already about this tax. For instance, it repeatedly says that only a thousand big polluters will pay. Everyone knows that is untrue. If you want any greater expert to make that observation, just ask Professor Garnaut or read his last climate review. This is the man who the government paid for several years to give it advice on this question—their trusted confidant—and he said, 'Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost'. Of course, that is the real truth. What the government told us about there being only a thousand payers is an untruth.

An opposition member: 22 million Australians.

Ordinary families will cop the carbon tax in the neck.

An opposition member: They will cop the lot.

They will pay the lot. Their electricity bills at a carbon tax rate of $25 a tonne will go up by around $500; gas will go up by 10 per cent; there will be increases in fuel costs; groceries will be up by at least five per cent—everything will be slugged. New South Wales consumers are likely to wear a thousand-dollar-a-year extra costs. The South Australian Council of Social Service said a few days ago that it expected the cost of living in South Australia to rise by $1,200 and a significant proportion of that would be the carbon tax.

That is only the start. The Greens have made it absolutely clear that they want a carbon tax of at least $100 a tonne so that people will change their behaviour. It would close the coal fired power stations. They want a much more severe tax than whatever number is announced on Sunday. That is not a scare tactic. This tax is supposed to hurt. It is designed to hurt so much that people will stop doing the things that they normally do. They will leave their car at home rather than visit their sick mother on the other side of town. They will walk to school or walk to work, or sell their house and buy a new one near their job so that they will keep their vehicle at home. They will switch off their heater on a cold Canberra morning, or they will not turn on their cooling system on a hot summer's day. This is a tax that is designed to hurt. It is designed to hurt so much that people will change their very behaviour.

The Prime Minister has said that we have got to do this because we are being left behind by the rest of the world. That is another untruth. The Productivity Commis­sion report commissioned by the government made it absolutely clear that Australia's efforts in this regard are about average, similar to what other countries are doing. Another untruth that the government keeps telling us is that—

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