Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

He said that at the National Press Club. You should have been there, my friend. You should go to your electorate of Lindsay and speak to those people who are saying to us: 'Our member is letting us down. Our member does not understand how hard we are doing it. Our member does not understand how difficult it is to make ends meet. And now, instead of listening to mainstream Australia and Lindsay, our member supports the Prime Minister in sucking up to Bob Brown so she can keep her job.' You are a disgrace and you should hang your head in shame.

When we look at the steel industry, a very important industry, and those important workers across the country, particularly in Port Kembla, we hear the government proudly say that it is providing additional assistance to the industry. It is supposed to be $300 million in assistance, but guess what? For our two main steel companies, BlueScope and OneSteel, the total value lost on the first day that the carbon tax was announced was almost the equivalent of the package. On the second day the value that these companies lost was over $100 million. So your so-called compensation is inadequate to even make up for the loss in corporate value of our two main steelmakers. So much for compensation!

This government is all about churn: punish people, bring in a program, tax it, borrow it, hand it around, move it around—a bit of trickery and a bit of deception. No wonder there is no trust in what is said. This government has not explained to the Australian people that Australian industry and Australian manufacturers are some of the most efficient in the world. Our steel producers are the most efficient in the world. They create fewer emissions and have a more efficient production process than exists in China. The government has not explained that to the Australian people. It has not said to the steelworkers: 'You do a great job. You are part of an efficient and effective industry.' 'No', it has said: 'You are big, bad polluters. You naughty people! You make steel—the steel we need for our cars, the steel we need for our houses—you big, bad, naughty people! We would prefer to make the steel you make more expensive, to drive manufacturing offshore to countries that will create more emissions to make the same things we used to make'. So we are closing down industry and closing down jobs to—guess what?—increase worldwide emissions because our manufacturing will go to places like China, where they create more emissions making the same stuff that we used to make.

You have not explained any of those facts, not to your constituents and not to the Australian people. You have not actually stood up and been proud of Australian manufacturing. In industries like cement, chemicals and plastics; in the steel industry, in the car industry and the car components industry; in food and grocery processing; and in aluminium and glass making, a carbon tax is going to punish these industries and give a leg-up to imports with which they compete.

So we will be sending our manufacturing offshore to increase emissions. Many Australian businesses already operate on wafer-thin margins. Does the government listen? No. When the Prime Minister was asked, 'What do you say to manufacturing?', she giggled, 'Ha, ha, ha. They will do what they've always done. They'll innovate; they'll get on with it'. Well, Prime Minister, manufacturing businesses are facing a pretty tough time and your carbon tax will send many of them to the wall and will send many of them offshore.

What will it do to households? It will hurt them even more because of the lie you spread during the last election and the lies you continue to spread now.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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