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

I seek leave to move a motion of censure against this government.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah moving immediately—That this House censures the Government for deceiving the Australian people by bringing in a carbon tax that is nothing more than a bad tax built on a lie.

We know that this is a bad tax built on a lie because what else have we been hearing for months now from this Prime Minister. This Prime Minister has said day in, day out in this House that this carbon tax will make the 1,000 biggest polluters pay. What have we got today? The great disappearing carbon tax. All of a sudden it is not 1,000 it is just 500—shades of the East Timor boat people solution, shades of the climate change people's convention. This is a Prime Minister that cannot get her story straight from one day to the next. This is a Prime Minister who simply cannot be trusted with a new tax. This is the government of pink batts. This is the government of school halls. This is the government of boat arrivals one after another, day after day, and now this government wants the Australian people to trust it. The most incompetent government in Australian history wants the Australian people to trust it with the most complex change in Australian history. They will get it wrong on Sunday, just as they have got it wrong day in, day out in this House since February of this year. Standing orders must be suspended because this government must be censured.

This is a bad tax based on a lie. It is all economic pain for no environmental gain. The biggest lie of all—the Prime Minister can turn her back on me, but she cannot turn her back on the Australian people. She can turn her back on me and pretend to be interested in the conversation of her colleagues but, I tell you what, she does not talk to her colleagues about the design of a carbon tax. She does not talk to any of them about the design of the carbon tax. She does not even talk to the Treasurer, who just yesterday thought it was still 1,000 big companies. What an embarrassment! We have got a Prime Minister who lied about the carbon tax before the election, who cannot get her story straight in this parliament, who runs away from the people at an election, who will not face the people at a plebiscite, who will not face questions in this parliament and now she turns her back. How childish, how immature, how cowardly is this Prime Minister?

This is a bad tax based on a lie, but it is not just the lie six days out from the election, the whole argument for a carbon tax is lie after lie after lie. She says that we have got to have a carbon tax to keep up with the rest of the world—wrong, just a lie, a lie that has been nailed by no less an authority than the Productivity Commission, which says there is no country in the world, not one, that is imposing an economy-wide carbon tax or emissions trading scheme. Answer that question, Prime Minister. You can shuffle the papers all you like, but answer this question, Prime Minister: what do you think of the Productivity Commission's statement that there is no country on earth—

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